


All Bad Fortune

by yaodai



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: And the hurt happens only in the first chapter, But he is the best person to befriend when you need a new limb, But i have no patiencecfor writing kid fics, Gen, I wanted an au with ezra befriending maul too, Maul is a troll, So i took the maul finds ezra first thing and twisted it, TW: Blood, The descriptions are mild, The warning are there because some people dont want to poke at that stuff at all, tw: limb loss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8145370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yaodai/pseuds/yaodai
Summary: Ezra was lost and chased. Then Ezra was found.All bad fortune is to be conquered. Especially by those two people who met by chance and who are the most enduring of them all.





	1. Lost

Chapter 1: Lost

 

"Oh, no, no, no, no! Please, no!" Ezra chanted feverishly, trying his hardest to keep the ship from hitting the ground.

It was just a little vessel without even access to the hyperdrive, a small thing stolen in an act of desperation. Ezra was running away for so long, he felt like if he didn't put some distance between himself and the Inquisitors the chase would end soon, along with his life.It was a mistake.

In the air, he had no way to hide himself, had no way to defend himself and the small craft had no chance against battle ready TIE-fighters chasing him. The emergency sirens were filling the air with noise, screeching one over another, the lights of the controls were flashing in warning. Something was breaking on his left - a blaster shot already found him once -  the sparks were jumping in the air from where some circuits burned out. His eyes were tearing from the acidic smoke filling the cockpit of the ship with every passing second. Even breathing hurt. The sudden turbulence almost threw Ezra through the front window.

"Keep flying...!" he begged. The ship however was slowly dying on him. The red blaster shots blazed right next to him, blinding Ezra with red light. Then there was a loud crash, followed by mind numbing screech of metal twisting and bending under unholy pressure.

Fire blossomed into life, hungrily swallowing everything on it's way, while the electrical charge travelled through the console.

Ezra jumped away with a scream, barely avoiding electrocution. The sparks flew up high, the delicate electronic parts cracked and died one after another. Smoke erupted from the cracks and every little space it could find, rose up and whirled against the front window, obscuring the visibility even more. He coughed, eyes watering, hands waving desperately, trying to regain at least a tiny bit of control. The system, however, was already dead.

Then Ezra saw the ground coming.

 

xxx

 

Ezra regained consciousness coughing. His throat and mouth were painfully dry and they seemed to be full of dust, all he could smell was smoke. He spat out, trying to get his mouth clean, but all he managed to accomplish was a wave of nausea overtaking him. Ezra rested his forehead on the ground, desperately trying to steady himself.

The ringing in his ears was making it impossible to hear anyone, he couldn't open his left eye and the right one was tearing up so much he barely could see a thing. He was still alive, though. Alive meant he still had to get away from the Inquisitors.

The situation was beyond desperate, his brain had trouble with putting two sentences together, but Ezra was too stubborn to just lie down and die. If the Inquisitors were going to win this, then he will make them work. Ezra pushed himself up on his elbows, slowly trying to get on all four, but something was wrong.

The moment his right knee touched the ground, Ezra fell down screaming. The sudden shot of pain was blinding. Ezra rolled over, instinctively trying to protect his leg. He was probably making noise. Probably a lot of it. His face felt wet, his nose was stuffed and there was a rancid taste in his mouth.

"Oh shit, oh shit this is bad, oh shit...!" he mumbled. The curse words were helping, but not much. The pain still was like nothing he had ever felt before. Ezra sucked the air in through his teeth. He didn't want to look down, he didn't want to check just what was so wrong with his leg. And he had to. He had to survive and to survive he needed to know what was wrong.

"On three..." he promised himself, blinking rapidly. "On three." Three came entirely too fast, but Ezra pushed himself upwards anyway, looking down. His trousers were dirty, burned at the edges with dark smudges all over, but that was not the disturbing part. The right pantleg was shining wet, stained by deep, deep red color and it ended rapidly in torn, miserable rags and oh SHIT.

Ezra dropped on the ground with a pained whim, the sheer terror of realization making him incapable of thinking, brain short-circuiting on one single thought. His leg was gone. His leg was gone, it was gone, gone, gone gonegonegone!

He couldn't run anymore, he couldn't move anymore, all he was able to do was to lie there and wail.

"I want Kanan!" Ezra whimpered, fingers digging into dirt. "I want Kanan..."

Kanan would know what to do, Kanan would take him to safety, Kanan was safety and Kanan was nowhere nearby.

Ezra grit his teeth. Crying was not going to savechim, he had no time for crying, what he needed was to do something.

He needed to get away from the explosion site, Ezra decided, swallowing hard. Just to not give the Inquisitors the satisfaction, just to make their job just this tiny little bit more difficult. And to do that he needed to move now; soon enough his body would be too numb, maybe even sooner than he expected. Ezra had no idea how long he was unconscious. Then... then it will be over, all will be over.

"Okay," he gasped. "Okay."

He pushed himself on his elbows once again, desperately trying to not look down and then moved himself backwards, dragging his body away at miserably slow pace. It felt like an eternity, but Ezra was repeating the action until his shoulders became numb and he had to rest for a moment. He looked down for a short moment, just to estimate how far he managed to move.

"Shit!" Ezra hit the ground with his fist. There was a visible red stain leading straight to him. Red stain that was much shorter than he expected it to be.

"Shit," he repeated again, not having the strength to fight anymore. He barely could see a thing and the tears in his eyes were not the only reason anymore. The colors seemed to be slipping away from the blurred shapes of whatever he was looking at, bending and becoming less and less intense. The world was slipping away and Ezra couldn't do anything about that anymore.

The last thing he saw was a hooded figure kneeling down next to him, shadows obscuring everything besides the yellow eyes that seemed to be shining with the light of their own.


	2. The Man Called Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Ezra wakes up in much better place, with a mysterious Zabrak patching him up.  
> Let's not kid ourselves, we all know this is formerly Darth, now just Maul.

Chapter 2: The Man Called Shadow

 

A headache was what woke Ezra up. His mind felt woozy and it was hard to concentrate on anything. There was that feeling however, the desperate need to know. With a pained groan, Ezra cracked his eyelids open. It didn't help much. The light instantly blinded him and send a jab of intense pain. There were dark spots swarming his field of vision. Everything that wasn't covered in blackness was unfocused, with colors spilling in unrecognizable blobs.

Ezra closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to ground himself somehow. The inside of his mouth was dry and there was nasty, bitter taste on his tongue. Sucking air through his teeth hurt, through in comparison to how his head felt it was barely noticeable.

Concentrate! Ezra ordered himself. He couldn't just lie here like a sack of yogan and do nothing!  
Since he couldn't see where he was, Ezra tried to focus on his other senses. There was a sharp scent of disinfectant in the air. There was also that characteristic metallic taste to it, a very characteristic thing for space ships; the ventilation could clean the air but it never could make it fresh like a real vegetation planetside could. So, he was onboard a ship. The other scents, oil and metal, the odd odor of synthetic fabric and acidic bite of electronics seemed to confirm his suspicions.

He was lying on a surface that wasn't exactly hard, but it wasn't soft either. A cot? It seemed to be narrow and he could feel a rough fabric of some sort under his fingers. Cots on space ships often were narrow, because every inch of space was precious, so it seemed like his theory got another point.

But how he got here? His own ship crashed, he remembered it clearly. The terror when he saw the ground coming, the desperate fight with the controls to keep it in the air, how everything shook, the impact tossing him like a rag doll, the deafening explosions and the taste of blood in his mouth as he crawled away from the wreckage. And he was crawling, because...

A small, miserable whimper escaped his mouth, while the desperation and fear filled his heart to the brim. He needed to know, he needed to check, he needed to...!  
He pushed himself up to a sitting position, his hands crawling on the brown surface of a blanket, along the line of his legs, right towards the place where-

"Oh, you woke up," a man walked into the room. He was speaking quietly, his voice was soft and there was something odd about it, like he was unused to talking. He slowly walked towards Ezra, the walking stick in one of his hands filling the room with rhythmic noise.

"I, ah, I-!" Ezra stumbled on the words. There was something he was supposed to remember, to tell the man, something very, very important, but it was like there was a hurricane inside his head, making it impossible to grasp at any thought at all.

"Calm yourself," the stranger said. He was now close enough or Ezra to see his face. He was a Zabrak, with complicated, black tattoos covering his whole body. The lines vere fascinating, contrasting vividly with his deep red skin, and they were something to concentrate on.

"That's it," the Zabrak murmured, his voice still soft, completely not fitting the appearance. "Breathe, young one," the stranger continued. "The danger is over. Breathe."

Breathing sounded like a really great idea at the moment, so Ezra did precisely that.  
In through the nose, keep the air in for a few seconds, then let it go through the mouth, a short moment before taking yet another gasp of air. That was one of the first things Kanan taught him and Ezra always thought it was a pointless and boring exercise. Now he was falling right into it, thankful for developing this habit, feeling his racing heart slow down. The Zabrak patiently waited for him, odd yellow eyes that seemed to shine brightly even in the shadows, keenly observing Ezra.

"The transmitter," Ezra said, finally able to find out what was that he wanted to say so desperately. "T-There's a transmitter somewhere in me. It made them find me every time. The Inquisitors. I should... I shouldn't be here."

Because by just being with others, by letting others help him, Ezra was putting them in terrible danger. He needed to get away as soon as possible. He needed to...

"I took care of it."

"You..." Ezra's mind stopped for a second. "But they told me...!"  
That taking it out would be impossible, that he would need a surgery in a real hospital, that he was as good as dead if he tried to take it out by himself, because it would fry his nervous system.

"I'm good when it comes to machines," the stranger said. "Especially when it comes to connecting them and disconnecting with organic lifeforms."

"Oh," Ezra said, the tension finally leaving his body, letting the muscles relax for the first time since forever. "I... thank you!"

His only answer was a chuckle.

The Zabrak turned to the side and shifted through the things on the desk on the opposite side of the cot Ezra was lying on, giving him the time to look around for the first time. It definitely looked like a room inside of a spaceship. Walls were made of metal, with clearly visible hidden compartments. there was a vent entrance in one of the wall, with rows of pipes and isolated cables crawling across the ceiling. There were things dangling from them, mechanical and electronic parts on strings, slowly rocking back and forth, making small noises from time to time. It almost looked like they were hanged there for the aesthetic purposes if not for the fact they were clearly sorted, cleaned and shining with oil. The room looked much more like a workshop than a med-bay or even a living quarters.  
So, Ezra deduced, a small ship, small enough to not need a crew bigger than one.

"Here," the Zabrak turned around and handed him a bottle of water and a package of food rations. "You need to regain your strength."

Ezra simply nodded, suddenly remained just how dry his throat was.

The water tastes fresh and sweet, making it a real test of will to not gulp down everything at once. And that would be stupid, Ezra knew that. He lived on scraps and what he managed to steal during his childhood and he returned to that when he was chased. He knew exactly what would happen if he just devour it all.  
Ezra carefully put away the bottle and, deliberately slowly, tore open the package. It was one of these ready to eat, heavy on proteins type of food that was really popular among the spaceship crews not because of the taste - it was always awful no matter what sort of flavoring was used - but because it could last pretty much forever without spoiling and because it didn't took much space. Ezra took a small bite and chewed, concentrating on reading the attached information. It was better than counting to thirty before he swallowed, it never worked for him.  
It was definitely more proteins than anything else - which made sense, considering it belonged to a Zabrak - and had almost no taste at all, but it was filling, which was good enough for Ezra. He wrapped the rest back in the package, because eating more than a half would be asking for trouble and put it next to the water bottle.

"You must be quite something, to have the Inquisitors chase you like that," the Zabrak pointed out. "They don't just pick anyone."

Ezra furrowed his brow."You know of Inquisitors?"  
He didn't, until after he joined the Ghost crew. And he learned about how they trained only after he had a transmitter put inside and was forced to run.

"The Inquisitors are my enemies," the Zabrak said, his eyes narrowing, voice hardening. "All the Inquisitors and their masters are my enemies." That was a very specific thing to say, Ezra decided. A very particular choice of words, too. This man didn't only knew about the Inquisitors. No, there was much, much more to that.

"Were you a Jedi?" the question slipped out of his mouth before Ezra even knew he was talking. The yellow eyes widened slightly in surprise. Then the expression changed in something Ezra couldn't quite read because of the black tattoos. Did he accidentally woke some painful memories? Or was it disgust maybe?

"No," the Zabrak said. "But they never were the only one who knew the Force."

There was one other thing he could be, then, but it didn't make any sense at all. He helped him. He risked his own life to take Ezra away from the wreckage, to pull the transmitter out of his body, while the Inquisitors could show up at any moment. He gave him a place to rest and food just now and there was no need for things like these at all.

"Are you a Sith?"

Now the emotions on the Zabrak face were clear. Anger, hatred, cold fury, all of them deeply rooted, all of them powerful, blazing in the yellow eyes like fire.

"The Sith," he rasped. "The Sith took everything away from me!" He opened his mouth to talk some more, but in the end he only exhaled, his closed fists slowly relaxing. "This is no time to talk about the past," he said, his voice back to soft and soothing tones. "It is long gone."

"I'm sorry."

"There's no need for that," the Zabrak said. "There are questions that need to be asked after all. Like, just who are you, my young guest? What led you here?"

"I'm Ezra."

The Zabrak raised his eyebrows. "You're quite fast to offer your name."

"Well," Ezra smiled nervously. "You saved me and all? And you didn't need to. I think I owe you at least that much."

The Zabrak nodded, with a little satisfied smile on his mouth.

"How should I call you?"

There was a moment of silence. The Zabrak looked at him, yellow eyes seeing right through him, like he was judging Ezra. Finally, after an unnerving amount of time, a decision was made.

“The Inquisitors, they don't believe that I'm alive. Hunting me is like chasing shadows in their eyes and that's how they named me.”

Shadow. An odd thing to be named after, a name that suggested he wasn't fully trusted yet. Not that Ezra found that very surprising; they've just met. Still, it sting a bit. Ezra wanted to be trusted. He understood that it wasn't a thing so easily gained, not in this galaxy and not in these times, but still, the obviously false name still rubbed him the wrong way.


	3. Motto (I)

Chapter 3: Motto (I)

 

It took Ezra few days to regain his strength. Most of the time he spend on the cot, either sleeping - which was oddly easy considering the sharp, unpleasant pain constantly burning where his leg once was - or observing his host. Ezra still had no idea what exactly Shadow was, besides the fact that once upon a time he was a Sith. A scavenger? His ship definitely looked like the Zabrak was picking up useful items if he had a chance. He definitely was a mechanic too. He was handling every piece of gathered electronic with ease, turning what others saw as trash into many different things.

It was fascinating to look at Shadow while he was working. His fingers were dancing on the complicated surface of the circuits with ease, mechanical skeletons seemed to grow on their own. But the most outstanding thing was how he used the Force. It seemed just so effortless. Instead of putting tools away, Shadow was simply letting them float nearby, completely not bothered by the amount of concentration using the Force like that needed. Ezra himself needed to spend time to do something like that and keeping things up in the air was quickly tiring him out. Kanan was better, much, much better, but this… this was something else.

The Zabrak picked up on his fascination pretty quickly. He quickly took of a habit of sitting next to Ezra, letting him watch up close as he was doing his magic. It was.. .nice, like being let on a secret of some sort, like being accepted as good enough.  
Through it could be just because he was spending time with someone the first time since he got caught. Ezra had no idea how much he missed it, just being next to someone else, simply sharing a quiet moment. How long he was on the run?, the thought came, bringing along the taste of fear, shades of memories.

Ezra forced himself to stop, to pay attention to what was just next to him. Right now Shadow was working on a Datapad, doing things with letters and numbers, while Ezra was trying to repeat what Shadow did to make the little droid fly. It was a good thing to concentrate on, a thing that kept the things he wasn't ready to face at bay.

"This is more difficult than you made it look," Ezra grunted, when the droid jumped into the air just to again land up in his lap with a small plop.

"It's much easier when you have all the parts and there's no need to improvise," Shadow said.

"Getting all the parts sounds much more difficult," Ezra muttered. These times, it was all about re-using everything until it fell apart and then picking the pieces for stuff that still could be of some use. It probably wasn't always like that.

"What it was like before the Empire? The Galaxy?"

Shadow shook his head. "I wouldn't know. I wasn't really a part of it."

"Oh," Ezra said. "Sorry."

The Zabrak just raised an eyebrow, as if questioning what Ezra was feeling sorry for. Then his face went back to the neutral expression. He shuffled around the items gathered on the table, before he turned back to Ezra.

“You should familiarize yourself with this,” he said, handing him a Datapad. Ezra blinked in surprise, before he reached out to take the item. The content was even more confusing that this sudden order. “Anatomy?”

“This is a good start,” Shadow smiled.

“ A start? A start of what?” Ezra questioned. “I don't want to be a doctor!”

“You need to have some knowledge before we start on mechanic,” Shadow stated like it was the most obvious thing and Ezra was stupid for missing it.

“...these things are not having anything in common!”

“ And how else are you going to build yourself a new leg?” Shadow asked with a baffled expression on his face.

“...what?”

“ You obviously don't have an organic one and looking for a specialist every time something breaks would be insufficient.”

“ What?”

“I presume your lifestyle is quite risky,” Shadow continued. “ Therefore you should learn how to maintain artificial limbs on your own.”

“ You… are going to teach me?” Ezra blinked, still not being able to fully follow.

Shadow looked at him, the expression in his strange eyes impossible to identify. "I see no reason to not to," he finally said. Ezra raised an eyebrow, now feeling slightly suspicious. People were not doing things like that for no reason at all. Saving lives and stuff, but that was just a single action, made in the heat of a moment. Teaching, on the other hand, teaching, healing and letting someone else use the precious spare resources... there was time to think about that, about doing the math, all the pros and cons. There was something to gain here.

"How can I pay you back?" Ezra asked.

The appearance of a smile told him that he was on the right path indeed.

"I was away for a long time," Shadow said softly. “There's a war brewing on the edges of the galaxy I know nothing of. You, on the other hand, appears to be right in the middle of all of the interesting things."

"Yeah," Ezra nodded. "It's hard to get anything that makes sense from all this propaganda stuff on the Holo."

"Then you are fine with helping me?"

"If there's something I can't share because of reasons, I'll tell you." Ezra was definitely much better source of information than any Holo and the lies that Empire spilled right and left, but he was also a Rebel and he would rather not have a new leg than land his friends in danger by running his mouth.

Shadow nodded. "That is perfectly fine."

 

xxx

 

Days have passed. Sitting duck by the broken vessel made no sense, especially because someone would start looking for the lost Inquisitor - and the suddenly lost target of the hunt too - so they left the planet. With the calming hum of the hyperspace around them, there was literally nothing to do. Not that Ezra actually could do many things, still severely weakened both from the blood loss and being on the run for a long, long time. He could only rest that much, which made him appreciate Shadow teaching him even more.

It was something that was killing the boredom, something to wrap his head around to keep bad things inside his head at bay. Through still, learning how muscles and nerves and all the veins and stuff were located and why was much more boring when there was need to memorize it all. The Shadow was quite good at spotting when Ezra's attention was wandering off places and usually there was either time for the meal - that didn't take too much time, considering his version of cooking was tearing off the wrapper - or talking about how much the Empire was lying about everything.

"...and I can't tell you where we hid the Force-sensitive kids, you know, not after how the Empire found them in the first hiding place, but yeah, that's going on. "

Shadow merely hummed.

"So, it's still going on," he said. "Through taking kids out of the government sanctioned schools is quite the big step."

"You're awfully calm about it," Ezra furrowed his brow. "Shouldn't you be like shocked, or something?"

"I'm surprised," Shadow admitted. "Surprised that it took less than twenty years for things to go so far. Gifted children disappearing without a trace all over galaxy, nobody blinks an eye!"

"Your sense of humor is awful," Ezra grimaced. "And some people do care. They just can't... they can't say things out loud, so they are looking on their own."

Shadow eyed him.

"Sorry," Ezra sighed. "Another of those things that I really can't talk about."

"This is alright," Shadow smiled softly. "I have no interest in making lives of those who oppose the Empire more difficult."

"But wait!" Ezra brushed his hair aside. "You said you're surprised about the Academy... but they were taking people before the Empire?"

Shadow was silent for a long moment, his tattooed fingers - and ouch, that definitely had to hurt, even badass Sabine was cursing up a storm when she accidentally hurt her fingers - along the side of the flimsi with anatomical diagrams on it. Something in his expression...

"You... that happened to you, didn't it?" With every word spoken out loud Ezra was more and more sure that this was the truth. "That's why you hate the Empire," Ezra gasped. "That's why you are not using your name, in hiding...!"

And it all was terrifying, because Shadow was old. Not old-old, with hunched back and a beard or whatever equivalent of an old age his species had, just... much older than Ezra expected someone kidnapped to become an Inquisitor to be.

"Something like that happened, yes," Shadow said in a dead tired voice. "Through back then there were no Inquisitors. There was no need for the Inquisitors back then. They wouldn't even have a chance against any decently trained Jedi."

"But that long ago..."

"The Empire, it's beginning, that was planned for years," Shadow slowly explained. "You will be able to see it with your own eyes if you spend some time over the political career of some people who are now in power."

"If they were not making you into an Inquisitor..." Ezra carefully started, not sure which words to use.

"What I was meant to become?" Shadow guessed with lips bend into a shape of a smile. "Not the Apprentice, obviously. I was merely a weapon, tossed aside the moment I appeared to be broken."

"Tossed aside?"

"Left to die," Shadow corrected himself. "Well, I didn't."

The tone of his voice was still soft and calm, his expression so unbelievably controlled.

"I..." Ezra started. He didn't know what he was supposed to say. He felt sorry, he felt sad and angry, and dozens of other things.

"Calm yourself," Shadow said, handing him the flimsi. "Concentrate on healing and on learning. Vengeance for whatever was destroyed will come later."

"Justice," Ezra said. "We will get justice. For me, for you, for everyone."

"Just another word for the same thing."

 

Xxx

 

"Can I ask you something?" Ezra asked.

How much time had passed, he couldn't tell.  
In space, travelling from planet to planet, the days were blending together. The pass of time was noticeable only by the progress Ezra made when it came to the anatomy lessons. The anatomy was followed by the mechanics and then welding and wiring things together. He still felt uneasy looking down, not seeing the leg that was supposed be there. However right now it was impossible to not look at the stump.

Shadow was sitting on the floor in front of the cot, making the final readjustments to a prosthetic leg that was going to take place of Ezra's missing limb. Shadow was pretty stubborn about having Ezra build the whole thing on his own, letting him make all sort of the mistakes and then he made him correct it all. Now they were about to attach the limb for the first time, so the blanket that usually hid the stump was off.

Up until now, he was avoiding looking at it. Now there was no running away from it. There it was, a stump of what once was his leg, ending rapidly about in the middle of his tight with a wide, dark scarring. Ezra knew for a fact that his limb was torn in the explosion. The mere memory of the pain made him shudder. The point was, it definitely wasn't a clean cut or anything even remotely close. If not for Shadow, he would bled out. If he was found by anyone else he would probably bled out too, because there were only few ways to close a wound so big. One of them, the easiest and the fastest one, required a very specific tool.

"What is it?" Maul looked up.

"You have a lightsaber, don't you?"

Maul looked up at him. "Why are you asking?"

"Uh..." Ezra chewed on his lower lip. "You know how to use it, since, well. And you used it to save my life, didn't you?"

Shadow smiled. "That what's happened. Though I'm not sure where are you going with that."

"Well, first of all, thank you?" Ezra smiled, feeling stupid. "Like, really. Usually people run the opposite way from the wreckage of a spaceship that looks like it's going to explode."

Shadow chuckled. "There's a lot you don't know about people then."

Ezra couldn't quite imagine an scavenger desperate enough to die in the fiery explosion, but, well, everything in life was still waiting for him to see.

"A-anyhow, the wound, the wound would look different, so I think you still have a lightsaber with you?"

"Your point is?" That wasn't a refusal, that wasn't declining the existence of a lightsaber, that wasn't ending the conversation. More like an invitation to continue it.

"Well, if you don't mind me hanging around for a little more - and if you don't it's fine, really, you did so much for me already! - but I was thinking..."

"You wish to learn."

"I'm sure you know stuff that I don't," Ezra smiled shyly. "And I'm definitely all rusty now, considering all I was doing was just sitting on my butt... unless you don't want to. Then it's fine, really!"

"That actually sounds nice," Shadow smiled. "It's been... It's been years since I had a chance to spar with anyone. The last time... the last time it was my brother."

"I'm sorry," Ezra looked away. "If I brought up something you didn't want to talk about..."

"There's nothing wrong," Shadow said with a soft smile that actually looked real. "My brother, he was the source of the few nice memories I actually have."

That... wasn't making things any better. To have someone so nice and then to lost that person! Ezra knew that certain sort of pain was too well. He wanted to ask more about that mysterious brother of Shadow. What sort of a person was he? What he liked? And so on. It didn't feel right, though. Shadow sounded like it was still an open wound for him and Ezra would hate to hurt the man just to satisfy his curiosity.

"I thought I was good," he said instead. "A bit, at least. I wasn't training for too long, but I had a lot of experience, finding my way around the Empire, so I thought I would be just fine."

And then the universe proved him wrong. He could jump higher than normal people, had better reflexes and these feelings, warning him about stuff, but so did the Grand Inquisitor, who was like a nightmare incarnated, faster, better, stronger, well trained and all. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't just jump over the distance that was behind him and the Inquisitor.

"There's always someone stronger, "Shadow said softly. "And sometimes they are so much more…”

He looked away, at some distant, painful memories.

Ezra bit his lip. It shouldn’t make him feel better, to know that someone went through something like he did, something nasty and painful. It was too close for wishing pain upon other just to show them how he felt and it was just plain wrong. Still, knowing that he shared an experience with someone like Shadow, someone so strong and powerful, it was making him feel less like a failure.

“Power,” Shadow started, almost as if he was reading in Ezra’s mind. “It comes in many forms. Physical capability, using your weapon masterfully, this is not everything, this never will lead you far enough to reach your goal.”

Ezra nodded. “I know. I know being powerful is sometimes being smarter than your enemy, having a surprise up your sleeve or people to help you… But the Inquisitors proved me that I’m shit at fighting and that’s like the beginning of all these things! I can’t risk other people’s lives when I can’t protect them!”

Shadow furrowed his brow for a slip of second, or maybe it was just light moving playfully around, because the moment passed in a blink of an eye, leaving his face calm and mysterious like it always was.

“The Inquisitors appear to be quite fond of using these oddly shaped lightsabers,” he inquired slowly.

“Yeah,” Ezra nodded. “I’ve bumped into some of them even before… all this, and they all were using it. I think it’s to cause fear. It’s looking creepy alright!”

A smile slowly crept upon Shadows face. “I can certainly teach you how to stand against a saberstaff user,” he stated. “Though I believe myself to be a much more difficult opponent than they would ever be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to attach new leg to Ezra this chapter, but they just kept talking and talking...  
> Well, they are two very socially starved people and they do click together very well.  
> I've decided to let them have a nice thing for once.


	4. Motto (II)

  


Ezra was procrastinating and Shadow was letting him do so for some reason.However he could talk for only so long before he would be all out of things to talk about.

That or it would be late and Ezra was aware that time actually was of importance. The shelter gave him illusion of peace, but that definitely was not the state of the Galaxy. There was still the Empire over there, hurting people. He should be out there, but to do so, he needed to be back on his feet.

Now there was even another promise on the table, a very tempting one.

Ezra swallowed and forced himself to look down again.

Imagining, how his leg would look like with metal attached to it, instead of ending so... rapidly.

He quickly closed his eyes, fighting a wave of nausea.

"Ezra?"

"I'm okay," he replied quickly. He wasn't alone an on his own, so of course he was alright.

Shadow definitely doubted his words, Ezra could feel it pretty clearly, but the man did not call him out on that. He couldn’t quite put his finger on if it was just shadow being nice and considerate or just inability to find the right words, but either way, he was grateful for getting yet another moment to brace himself for whatever was coming.

"Lie down," Shadow finally said. "I'm going to put you together."

"Can't I help?" Ezra furrowed his brow, daring to open his eyes again. He looked up, not daring to let his gaze meet the scarred stump again; it was going to be looking entirely different anyway, no reason to memorize how it looked at its worst, right?

"This is not going to be most pleasant experience," Shadow calmly explained, clearly waiting for him to obediently drop on the cot.

"You mean, this is going to hurt?"

"It is," Shadow nodded.

That...made sense. They were about to jam a bunch of metal, wires and other stuff into the stump of his leg, of course it was going to hurt. And apparently work, too. For some reason. That was the part he couldn’t quite grasp, despite all the time he spend on learning how to maintain and modify the artificial limb.

"Don't I need like a complicated surgery for this?"

"Usually you do," Shadow nodded. "I, however, I'm better than a surgery."

"So... this is like a Force stuff?" Ezra asked. "Can I learn this?"

"Sadly," Shadow shook his head. "I doubt that. This a very, ah, specific ability."

"Specific to you?"

There was a small twitch of muscles on Shadows face.

"Something like that I guess," he agreed, nodding slowly. "Something like that. Once, there was more, many more Force-sensitive beings able to do that. Now, I really don't know."

His people, Ezra guessed. Wherever Shadow came from, that place was as destroyed as Ezra's own home.

He slowly moved towards the cot and sat down.

"Can you tell me what is going to happen?"

"Magic."

"That explains literally nothing!" Ezra protested. "Bah, I have more questions now!"

Shadow chuckled.

"I'm going to... use the Force to slightly modify the place where the prosthetic and your leg are going to connect," Shadow slowly explained, visibly trying to put in words things that appeared to be more... supernatural. "You will not need to replicate that trick if you will find yourself in a need to upgrade or repair the leg, it should be removable and even putting completely different prosthetic in shouldn't be a problem."

"That sounds... good. And I understand it."

"Oh, that one was the most challenging part."

Ezra snorted.

Shadow was probably cracking up jokes on purpose, but it worked, even if these were kind of on the offensive side.

He lied down, then shifted a bit, trying to find a comfortable enough position on the cot, suddenly hyperaware of how hard its surface was and how awkward he looked like, wiggling like a fish out of water.

"Is this fine?" Ezra asked, feeling blush creeping onto his cheeks.

"It is."

The short nod did not make anything any better, but now, besides being embarrassed Ezra started to fear what was coming. Whatever it was supposed to be.

"Are you going to warn me?"

"Counting to three is good enough?"

"You are so going to cheat, aren't you?"

Shadow grinned.

Ezra noticed the green mist crawling up the cot only after it was completely surrounding him, reaching out towards his stump.

Before Ezra managed to put a question together, pain hit him like a lightning strike.

All Ezra could see was green as his back arched, body desperately trying to escape the invisible grasp of whatever was burning through his nerves with a living fire. He wasn't sure how long it was, he wasn't sure if he screamed or if his throat tightened too much for that making sounds was impossible.

The darkness came and it couldn't be more welcome.

 

xxx

 

The metal attached to his leg looked off and out of place, but it was still a leg to stand on. It also covered his leg neatly, looking more like a piece of ancient armor and covering all of the tender scars. Many people were wearing prosthetics and they were moving around just fine. Like Maul.

Very slowly, Ezra looked down on his feet and concentrated, trying to feel everything as he slowly shifted his new metal leg.

It was... weird. He could feel the weight of his leg, definitely heavier than it was supposed to be. He could feel the shift, the movement, but it was more like his hair shifting against his necks or slipping from behind the ear.

"That's not bad," Ezra mumbled, trying to reassure himself. "I can work with that."

He bend his knee and it worked like a well oiled mechanism... which it actually was.

Ezra wiggled around, setting both of his feet on the ground.

Then he shuddered.

Shadow was a minimalist when it came to things stuffed on his ship. Or rather, he didn't have organic feet to actually feel that the metal floor was cold like the moons of Geonosis and he was in a desperate need of a carpet.

Giving himself a moment or five, to get used to the temperature, Ezra stared down at his legs, trying to psyche himself up for what was coming next.

Then the waiting became just plain ridiculous, so, deeply exhaling, Ezra pushed himself up on his feet.

Standing. He was standing!

It was hard to not feel euphoric about this, even if there was that odd pressure in the middle of his tight that wasn't there before.

Encouraged by the success, Ezra made his first step.

Then he was on the floor, blinking in utter confusion and trying to unwrap himself from the blanket, that somehow joined his mess of tangled limbs on the floor.

Of course, this was no end to his utter humiliation.

Shadow was there, standing a few steps away and chuckling.

With a groan, Ezra let his head drop on the floor.

"This actually do look funny from this perspective," Maul shamelessly chuckled, looking down at him, in no hurry to help. Or do anything at all.

"Ass," Ezra grunted and pushed himself back up.

"Well, I do warned you it would be different," Maul just shrugged.

"So..." Ezra tilted his head. "You felt down on your face too?"

The Zabrak rolled his eyes. "I was forced to change my legs more than once," he admitted with a grimace.

He so did feel flat on his face.

It made Ezra feel much better, much less of a useless klutz who should just lie down and wait to die.

"How do you do that then?" Ezra asked. "Walking?"

Shadow shrugged. "You fail once? Try again."

"There's that pronoun about repeating the same action over and over again..." Ezra muttered.

"Ignore it, that's is how ignorant fools are explaining why they are unable to better themselves," Shadow grimaced with distaste. "Succeeding at the first try is just pure luck. And luck is never enough. It runs out, leaving you with literally nothing."

Ezra nodded. That sounded pretty logical. It took him awhile before he became really good at petty robbery and the small children seemed to be similar when it came to talking and walking.

After several very miserable tried and gaining a whole new collection of bruises, Ezra finally could move around. Or rather awkwardly drag his new, metal limb around, while he was shifting on his organic foot.

It was much easier inside the ship, which was probably one of the reasons why Shadow decided to drag him outside as soon as it was possible.

Now ground near the ship looked like Ezra was about to start his own vegetable garden, all plowed up with his own ball of foot, with sad and broken remains of these thin, crunchy plants with oddly shaped, wide leaves. At least they smelled nice, sort of minty and a bit like these evergreen, bluish-green trees some people were putting in their gardens just because it looked pretty.

Ezra didn’t mind the outside much; it felt good, to not be stuck anymore inside the ship, to have a chance to look up and see not a metal ceiling, but tree branches reaching up towards the sky.

Even if his balance was definitely off too, to the point he was hunched to the side just to be able to stand and every time he looked up he was risking dropping on the ground again.

"How are you doing this?" Ezra asked. He sounded a little bit too much like he was whining for his own taste, but he was starting to be annoyed with himself.

"This is not something that is supposed to take five minutes to learn," Shadow commented. A crooked smile was plastered on his lips for awhile now; he was clearly enjoying the show. "However it could help if you stop keeping this leg in one position and start using it. It has joints, I've checked."

Ezra grit his teeth. Like it was that easy. He needed to think about bending his knee and ankle and all those other tiny but important things. He couldn't even feel if he was standing correctly or his foot was about to shift in a way that would lead to sprained ankle, which was making things much more complicated.

"How long it took for you to learn how to move around?"

It was just a simple question, but Ezra already knew it was one of these things he shouldn't be asking. There were a lot of these things when it came to Shadow, Ezra learned, many insignificant things that were bringing up unpleasant things from the past. Many people had scars like that these days, especially those who decided to join the rebellion.

"Truthfully, I do not remember much of it," Shadow said, his voice calm in that odd manner that was telling entirely different story about how he was feeling. "However you have time and relatively safe place to practice."

"I know," Ezra nodded with a heavy sight. "And I'm sorry for acting like a brat. I just... I'm afraid."

He swallowed. To tell the truth he was utterly terrified because he couldn't move like he was used to and his balance being off because of the different weight of his new leg was a solid proof that he was not going to be able to move like he did before the limb loss at all.

The Empire was getting more and more aggressive, the Inquisitors were still there - hunting down the force users, kidnapping little children - and Ezra needed to be as good as it was possible, just to fight back.

Having a lot of time was just an illusion, cast by spending lots and lots of time far away from any settlements and cities.

Even now, they were on some planet Ezra couldn't even identify, all alone, standing in the shadows of monstrously high trees with thin, sharp shaped leaves, raining on them from high, high high above, where the branches were reaching out, covering the ground around the three in cold shadow.

Ezra was all too avate of the fact that he needed over a year to get at least vaguely decent at anything that wasn't robbery and now even that was out of his reach, because the heavy, metal leg was making lots and lots of noise.

"Stop sulking!" Shadow snapped at him, his patience finally running out.

Ezra just grunted something under his breath, not even words but an annoyed little growl, something he probably picked up from Zeb.

He wondered how messy his room became with the Lasat living there on his own. There probably was fur on everything and cleaning it off the blanked will be a real pain.

Shadow observed him, one eyebrow raised, hangs loosely set on his chest.

Then he came up to a decision of some sort.

"Sit down," he said.

"What?" Ezra blinked, feeling a pang of fear, almost like his heart skipped a beat.

"Am I doing something wrong?"

Stupid question, of course he was doing things wrong, he couldn't even walk like a normal person anymore.

He was probably not worthy of all the effort now.

"You are getting more and more frustrated," the calm statement made Ezra feel even worse. Even all the things he spend the last year learning weren't sticking if things were not going as Ezra wanted them too.

"... it's not going to help at all," Shadow continued. He opened his mouth to talk some more, but apparently Ezra failing at keeping his emotions in check was such painfully obvious sight it was noticeable at a mere sight. The Zabrak closed his mouth back up and furrowed his brow, before his body relaxed.

"Sit down," he repeated.

Ezra slowly nodded and limped towards the broken off tree branch. It has the size of the usual trunk of a tree and it was a very nice spot to sit down outside of the ship. They've even set up a small stove nearby - for whatever reason Shadow refused to simply set up a bonfire like a barbarian.

Ezra dropped heavily on the wooden surface, with every step feeling more and more defeated.

Shadow joined him, comfortably setting resting an ankle on one foot on the knee of the other. He was leaning slightly towards Ezra, with expression that looked like a mixture of annoyance, confusion and several other things he couldn't quite identify.

"Can you tell me what is going on?"

"I can't do that," Ezra muttered. "I can't... I can't even walk like a normal human being anymore!"

In the hindsight it was one of the things he probably shouldn't tell a double amputee, but at the moment, Ezra wasn't exactly thinking about what was falling out of his mouth. All the emotions suddenly filled him to the brim and took over, leaving him shaking like a leaf.

"And that's not the only thing wrong with me, e-even they knew I wasn't good enough to be trained...!"

"Well," Shadow said slowly, after he was sure there were no more words coming out of Ezra. "I'm probably the worst possible person for that sort of talk."

They both were completely alone on the planet and they both knew it.

"So," Shadow said slowly. "Unless you prefer to vent for awhile at a tree..."

Ezra shook his head, then looked down. Kicking at the dirt was much better option than looking at the Zabrak or following the advice and screaming his lungs out at the indifferent green giant.

However he could stare at the ground only for that long before it became somewhat awkward.

Ezra carefully peeked up.

"Well then, let's start with the most obvious things," Shadow sighed, then looked straight into Ezra's eyes. "If you try to return how to you used to move, you’re going to fail."

"Wha- what?" Ezra blinked, completely gobsmacked. He was expecting to hear something, well, different.

Kanan would try to reassure him and tell him to practice some more and that if he try hard enough things are going to end up well.

Shadow wasn't Kanan at all.

"The prosthetic is not going to turn into flesh and bone, no matter how hard you try and how clever surgeries are you going to get," Shadow continued mercilessly, his soft voice cutting the air like a blade.

"Stop trying, it won't work anyway."

"So what, I'm supposed to just let go? And what, try my luck as a farmer?"

"No," Shadow shook his head. "What you are supposed to do is to find a way to move around using what you actually have at your disposal. I can't help you much, our situations are obviously different."

"Oh," Ezra blinked.

"I learned how to use what I have at my disposal and so will you," Shadow continued. "You're clever, you will figure it out."

"How are you so sure?"

"How else are you still alive?" Shadow asked back with a baffled expression on his face.

"Uh..." Ezra looked away.

"Just imagine kicking someone in the shin," Shadow added.

Ezra shuddered, his imagination working overtime just to demonstrate how painful it would be.

"Exactly," Shadow said joyfully. "And that's the beginning!"

"Yeah, I am going to kick so many people. Just so many," Ezra couldn't help himself but chuckle. All of his muscles were still so tense, it hurt.

"Damn," Ezra cursed, partially because he was in pain and out of breath, partially because he was relieved and partially because...

"I think I'm a really shit at being a Jedi," he said. "The moment something goes wrong, I'm totally losing it."

That was much more than something but the Jedi were supposed to be something much more than normal people too. They were supposed to be mighty and always in control, letting the Force lead them no matter what...

"I-I thought I finally managed to get it, how to be a Jedi, you know? But I was wrong! I can't even do what the code says right! And that's like the very basics!"

Shadow pinched the bridge of his nose and actually groaned. That... never happened before. The Zabrak was always just that calm presence, always the same, never showing any strong emotions. This, this was different, way different and very confusing.

"So," the man started slowly, after a moment of gathering his thoughts. "This is about you not being able to exist as an emotionless statue?"

"The Jedi are not supposed to-"

"No," Shadow cut him out.

"No? Ezra blinked. "No what?"

"No to all of this. Just... no," Shadow exhaled deeply. "I'm not even sure how to explain how such obviously bad idea is just plain terrible."

Ezra knew that Shadow had little to no sympathy for the Jedi. He also was a former Sith, which probably explained the lack of warm feelings.

He probably shouldn't discuss the code with someone like that, who was openly disagreeing with it, but at this point, Ezra was desperate for anything.

"Look," Shadow relaxed, finally finding the right words. "Why droids still have installed programs destined to imitate emotions despite the obvious risk of them developing a personality and possibly a set of undesired behaviours?"

Ezra felt more than a little bit confused by the sudden change of topic.

"Uh..." he brushed his hair aside. "Because this makes easier talking to them?"

Having a discussion, or even ordering around something with the charms and social graces of a calculator would definitely be very awkward and troublesome.

"Exactly," Shadow nodded. "Droids have emotions to better interact with sentient beings and to better answer to their needs. Now, riddle me this: why Jedi are supposed to be less capable of social interactions than a binary droid?"

Ezra had no idea. He was asking similar questions before and the answers were leaving him only with more questions.

"Since you are actually made out of flesh and not screws and circuits, you are going to have emotions," Shadow continued. "Denying their existence is only going to make you weaker."

"Weaker?"

"For example: now. You're distraught. You have no idea how to work your emotions out or how to use them, because all the time you were occupied by becoming that perfect blank slate of a Jedi."

“Jedi are supposed to control their emotion,” Ezra muttered.

“Control,” Shadow echoed. “Control is not equivalent to pushing everything back and trying to wish it out of the existence. All you are going to achieve this way is regret.”

Ezra wanted to protest, to tell the Shadow how the Jedi code was a guidance for generation after generation of fine peacekeepers and knights, however…

Shadow definitely appeared to be familiar with the code and was picking it apart without an ounce of respect for the ancient words.

“You know the Jedi Code,” he stated instead.

Shadow nodded.

“I’ve studied a lot about the Jedi,” he said softly. “I was supposed to become their doom, familiarizing myself with their mentality and beliefs was logical.”

Ezra licked his lips, suddenly feeling slightly unease. The man in front of him was a former Sith, he was trained to kill what Ezra was trying to become. Yet here he was, helping him, teaching him the Jedi way… the irony of the situation was difficult to even comprehend.

“Your path is your own, however if you truly feel the need to follow the footsteps of dead people, then perhaps you should start from the very beginnings?”

“Beginnings?” Ezra blinked, feeling quite confused.

“The code you’re trying so hard to follow is just a mangled, broken version of the first one,” Shadow smirked. “This change was the beginning of an end of the Jedi, making them too occupied with chasing after perfection and too afraid of their own feeling to truly see the world around them.”

Ezra shifted, unable to not bend forward, too curious to not grasping at every passing word.

“The Code...it really changed? So much?” Shadow of course could be just biased against the Jedi as a whole, but it sounded more like something, somewhere on the way shifted very drastically.

Shadow smiled, his odd, yellow eyes shining in the shadows of the giant, ancient trees around them, making him look eerie and more like a spirit of some sort rather than someone made of flesh and blood.

“Emotions,” he spoke softly. “Yet peace.”

Ezra felt confusion overwhelming him. The words were similar, almost the same, but the meaning was almost completely different. Just why it was changed and so drastically, too?

Ezra had dozens upon dozens of questions now and no idea which one deserved to be voiced out first, which one could wait and if he even should ask any questions at all. Would it be offensive? Would it be not? Is Shadow going to be angry at his for running his mouth like that?

With his brain occupied too occupied, the words took the chance and slipped through Ezra's mouths.

"How different is the Sith Code?"

After his voice raing in the air and Shadows eyes widened in surprise, Ezra noticed what just happened.

He gasped and covered his mouths, but there was no way to just shove the words back into his throat.

"I'm so sorry!" he whimpered.

"The Sith," Shadow said, his face softening again, "say that the peace is just lie."

It was quite sad, but Ezra also found it to be a bit confusing.

"Peace... as if peace of mind, or they were speaking about peace of the galaxy?"

"Sometimes, I wonder that too."

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and the talking continues.  
>  At least now Ezra is somewhat mobile.  
> I'm also greatly baffled at the idea of Maul teaching Ezra how to Jedi.


	5. First Among Many

The sharp unnatural light was blinding him as it reflected on the cold surface of the metal table.Ezra hardly could do anything to avoid it, his hands and legs bound by rough, tight straps.He tried to free himself, of course he did, but the material was much more resistant than he expected.

Now there was a sharp, burning pain, vividly contrasting by a whole different kind of pain, one that came from lying down bare chest on a cold, metal surface for way too long.The worst of all was the overwhelming sense of hopelessness, the fear rising down in his throat, bitter and sour.Despite that, Ezra tried to concentrate, to feel the Force. Something wasn't right, he could feel it in his gut.Something was terribly, terribly off and it wasn't the fact that he was unable to move, to escape the imprisonment.

Reaching to the Force did not brought him the usual calmness. There was something dark, twisting and whirling around, disrupting the clear image, bringing only confusion.

"What..?" he gasped, his breath covering the metal surface of the table with a layer of mist for a short moment, before it evaporated.

The panic hit him just as the last of the droplets evaporated: he was unable to inhale, no matter how hard he tried.Ezra shifted, now fighting not only to free himself, but for his very life.The straps were much more durable and his strength was diminishing quickly.

Black spots started fluttering in front of his eyes, their number growing fast, making it almost impossible to tell what he was looking at anymore. Soon, the colors were sucked out of the world, leaving only the cold, metallic surface of the table and the growing darkness surrounding him.

A shape made of shadows shifted and moved towards him, it's pale appearance almost shining with its own cold light.Or maybe the eyes were the source of this freezing cold light, the eyes in the one of a kind shade of yellow, the one that was turning blood into ice and pushing Ezra in the depths of terror he didn't even know existed.

"Little Jedi..." the Grand Inquisitor hissed, his smile stretching enough for the sharp edges of his teeth to become visible.

Whatever was left in Ezra's lungs, desperately withheld to preserve just that little amount of oxygen, was enough to scream.

"Ezra," a voice, soft but strong managed to reach him though the darkness.

Ezra desperately tried to cling to it, because it sounded safe, the only one safe thing in this nightmare.

"Ezra," the voice was followed by a warmth on his backs. First right between the shoulder blades, then spreading forwards.

It took Ezra a moment to identify the source of the warmth as a hand, a strong one, with skin marked with scars and calluses.

"Ezra," now the voice was more stern, more like an order than anything else, but orders were good, orders were something to hold onto, something that was putting the world back together, into some form that was actually manageable to understand.

He concentrated on it, following without hesitation.The air was suddenly everywhere around and Ezra found himself gasping and then choking on it, taking in way too much in a way too short swallow.He coughed and grabbed at his chest - he could move, his arms were free, the  burning sensation gone as if it never existed - and curled up.

"Ezra," Shadow repeated once again, his voice strong. He was radiating warmth - and of course he was, something inside Ezra's brain said - he was a Zabrak, they had two hearts, their circulation system was turning every member of their race into a mobile heater.

Unable to answer, Ezra just coughed some more.

"Ezra, do you think C1 units looks better in red or orange?"

The question was so sudden and so weird, Ezra forgot about coughing and the Grand Inquisitor face, still lingering at the edge of his field of vision vanished into nothingness.

"What?" He asked as soon as he managed to straighten up, still mostly out of breath and probably a miserable sight.

"That's what I'm asking," Shadow smiled, shifting a little to give Ezra more space to move around, but not fully breaking the body contact yet.

Ezra was grateful for that, the ship, suddenly filled with eerie colors and shiny patterns he never paid much attention to until nowa was a bit much for his brain to take on. Concentrating on the warmth was much easier.

"That's like the weirdest question you've ever asked me," Ezra said, wiping the droll and tears off his face.

"Apparently those works best," Shadow said, not minding at all the icky sight.

There were many questions Ezra wanted to ask, preferably all of them at once. How did Shadow know it would work? How did he know that Ezra needed something odd like this in the first place? Had he experience with something like that? Had he experienced something like that?All these questions and little to no words to speak out loud.

"Thank you," was all Ezra could manage before the sudden wave of tiredness took over. Even keeping eyes open was difficult.

"This is fine," Shadow softly said, shifting some more and letting Ezra slowly lean back on the blankets. "This is just your mind trying to make sense of what had happen."

"Why now...?" Ezra mumbled into pillow.

"You're safe, you're healing," Shadow answered. "What would be the better time?"

"Preferably never," Ezra answered then promptly felt asleep.

xxx

Just like Shadow said, it was the first of the long row of nightmares that started haunting Ezra’s nights.

It was… annoying and exhausting and the voice of the long dead Grand Inquisitor was ringing in his ears even during the day, mixed with the whispery, unpleasant words of the others.

The fact, that despite trying, he still couldn’t move with ease and grace he was used too, was only fueling his frustration, which was leading him to making another mistakes. He ended up on his butt or kissing the ground so many times, he completely lost count.

“Damn it!” Ezra growled and punched the ground with his fist, then spat out the dirt that somehow got into his mouth and was gritting between his teeth in that repulsing way that send shudders down his spine.

“You’re not going to accomplish anything this way,” Shadow pointed out, not moving from his spot. For someone who was supposed to be connected to the Dark Side and despite his very own name, Shadow liked sitting in the sun. He was very subtle about it; at first Ezra didn’t notice that the man was slightly shifting, slowly following the sunlight that shifted during the day. It would be funny. If Ezra wasn’t so annoyed at the moment.

“Shouldn’t you like tell me to let go of control and let my emotions do the thing?” Ezra asked, vaguely remembering one of the battles with the Grand Inquisitor, the one where Kanan almost died and he reached out where we wasn’t supposed to for the first time.

“Power is useless when you have no way of controlling it,” Shadow pointed out.

“Then how I’m supposed to do this?” he grunted, spreading his hand as if to show what he was dealing with.

“Just like you did with walking,” came the unhelpful answer. “You’ve managed to do that just fine.”

“And how many times it took?” Ezra grunted. He wanted to run, he wanted to be able to dodge and not trip over his own legs, he wanted to jump and to do so many other things…!

“Stop thinking so much about what you are doing and just do it.”

“Do or do not again?” Ezra muttered. “I’m really trying to do it, seriously!”

“That’s the problem,” Shadow sighed. “You’re concentrating on moving your own body so much, you are not paying any attention to your surroundings. You’re tripping over yourself because you don’t account for the ground being uneven, not because you don’t know how to move.”

“But if I don’t…”

“Just try it,” Shadow snickered. “It’s not like you’re doing all that great job at not falling down now.”

Ezra groaned.

“That almost as bad as the time when Kanan had Sabine shot at me while I had to stand on my hands on the ship…!”

Shadow blinked.

“What?” Ezra asked after a short moment, finding the prolonged silence to be unnerving.

“I found myself to be… mildly disturbed at how familiar this image appears to be,” Shadow commented finally, speaking slower than usually, like he was looking for the right words to use.

Okay, even Kanan admitted that that one training exercise was an overkill and that he was sorry for bringing something like that, but… there was a lot of buts back then and it all ended up just fine…

"If you are unable to work it out on your own, then maybe you need a hand," Shadow made a decision. “You appear to be familiar with the method, through improvising is going to be needed since I’m lacking a blaster.”

With a wave of his hand, several thin, sharp leaves raised about the ground surface.

"What are you doing?" Ezra asked suspiciously.

"Motivating," the answer was short and didn't include a warning or even a time for Ezra to react.

"Ow, what the...?!" Ezra gasped, as one of the leaves shot forward, the pointy end cutting through his skin with ease.

"Just checking if you learn faster in action," Shadow said, the tone of his voice almost sweet.

He was definitely enjoying it.

Ezra jumped back almost tripping over as another set of leaves suddenly shot right at him.

"How do you know this stuff is not poisonous?"

"I don't."

He was bullshitting him, he had to, no one sane would risk just like that just to play a sadistic teacher role for the evening. Getting Ezra dying of poison after spending so much time on teaching him stuff and helping him heal, that just wouldn't make sense!

Yet, there was that evil gleam in Shadow's yellow eyes and another set of pointy, green needles raising up from the ground. It was all too similar to the face expression of Sabine after Kanan explained to the girl just what he needed her to do during the Jedi training sessions.

Ezra had no other choice than reciting Sabine's favorite set of words and  trying to duck out of the way. While the leaves were no blasters, they were still damn unpleasant!

xxx

Ezra was itching here and there, and his skin was dotted with little red spots, through it wasn’t as bad as he expected it to be. Partially because, just like shadow said, he didn't need to concentrate every time he needed to shift on his feet, through it still was more awkward trashing around than anything else. Things were still far from perfect and he was still walking with noticeable limp.

Partially that and partially because Shadow liked to stop just before the sharp edges of the leaves touched the skin and left the needles hovering for Ezra to see just where they were, before explaining just what went wrong this time.

Among the other things, Ezra learned that he hated leaves now. It was a real shame his lightsaber was gone. He would fry the heck out of the needles if he had a blade of his own. And he would cut down some of the trees, just because.

"We will work on regaining your agility," Shadow stated, as if Ezra had nothing to say at all. "Then we will proceed with something more advanced."

Ezra nodded, because it sounded logical and it wasn't like he had any better things to do. He had no idea where his friends were. he had no idea where anyone from the rebellion was and finding these people wasn't as easy as walking into the city and asking around.

Still...

"Can you just show me some things?" Ezra asked. "I know I have a lot to relearn before I'm any good, but I still..."

"Still curious?" Shadow asked with a soft smile.

Ezra nodded again, this time much more enthusiastically. He was going to see someone who was not a Jedi, performing lightsaber forms, while not trying to murder anyone!

The Inquisitors were fearsome and he had little to no time to actually look at the swordplay while fighting for his life and the Sith in the dark armor… back then Ezra was too occupied with running for his life to stare too much at the man.

Shadow reached for his walking stick, an accessory he liked to keep on hand despite not really needing it to move around. Of course there was a lightsaber hidden in this thing; he was concealing his weapon just like Kanan did.

The ignited blade was red- of course it was – and the scarlet light spilled over Shadow and the space around him, coloring the greenery underneath him darkly.

In this light, menacing and too connected with danger to feel comfortable, Shadow was looking scary, his tattoos blending with the skin and turning the face into an unreadable, menacing mask.

He slowly, deliberately shifted, the red blade making its way slowly through the air, buzzing with each movement like something alive.

Shadow was moving with well-practiced ease, no doubt in any of his steps, each movement following another without an ounce of doubt, completely deliberate and both scary and mesmerizing at the same time.

The first was the set of forms Ezra actually managed to recognize. They were one of the first thing Kanan showed to him, besides the very basics of using the Force.

Shadow was definitely moving differently than Kanan. His Jedi Master was moving calmly and with grace when he was performing the forms, his movements fluid and elegant; it looked more like performing a very complicated dance than demonstrating how to fight.

Shadow was moving in a completely different way. There was still grace in there, but it was a grace of a predator. Each strike had strength behind it.

"The Jedi were using this form to teach basics to their initiates," Shadow explained, breath completely steady, as i he wasn't performing a taxing physical activity at all. "The very basics of attack, parrying, hitting something. Not many of them decided to practice it besides the very basics."

"It looks way different from what I've seen," Ezra carefully commented.

"It definitely does," Shadow nodded, deactivating his lightsaber. "This form wasn't really fitting with what the Jedi have become; it was too wild for them, it relies too much on being unpredictable and chaotic."

"Isn't surprising your enemy a good thing?"

"They were not expecting to have an enemy who was capable of using a lightsaber," Shadow snickered. "Anyhow, it is a decent enough form to build on, especially since you seem to be already familiar with it."

"Build on?"

"Just study what you can of other styles," Shadow explained. "Choose what seems to fit you, then add it to your fighting style. No one was practicing only one form in its purest form, even when there were thousands Jedi on the Coruscant."

"That makes sense," Ezra nodded. It was hard to imagine, thousands of people fighting in the exact same, unchanging way for thousands upon thousands of ways.

"The next two forms are focusing mostly on defense," Shadow continued. "One was created for the sake of dueling a single opponent. The other one is more rounded, but it's also purely defensive."

"You don't sound like a fan," Ezra noted.

"I do not like simply standing my ground and waiting for my opponent to make the first mistake, no," Shadow explained. "Besides, it takes years to master these forms and I highly doubt you have that sort of time."

Ezra clearly didn't. He also remembered all too well the Inquisitor just coming at him, waving away his desperate attacks like it was just an annoying fly and cutting through his defenses without mercy. Standing his ground in front of something like that?

Ezra shuddered. Definitely not.

"I don't think I'm going to be any good at that either," he said. "I like to move around too much. And I would rather duck if someone was about to cut me, not to take the hit on my blade."

"There was another form that evolved from the defensive ones," Shadow continued. "It still utilizes a lot of defensive maneuvers, but there is also a healthy dose of brutal force."

Ezra furrowed his brow.

"I'm not sure if I can even pull the brute force thing," he muttered. "I mean, I'm on the small side?"

Shadow merely raised an eyebrow, with a clearly baffled expression on his face.

"You are aware that beings of your species tend to grow quite a lot during their puberty, or should I be the one to deliver you the bad news?"

Ezra felt the burn as the blood rushed to his face, spreading over his cheeks.

Shadow only laughed more seeing his misery.

"It is important to use your advantages, but you also need to be ready for the time, when you are unable to use your favorite skills," Shadow finally said.

"Guess you're right," Ezra muttered. "So, it's like parrying and then hitting hard?"

"Now you're making a perfectly fine form sound like something entirely barbaric."

"It just doesn't sound right?" Ezra shrugged. Maybe someday, if he would grow to be as high as Kanan was or close enough. Through he hoped he wouldn't, it was good to have an escape route through the vents or any other small holes.

"And what is your favorite form?"

“The one the Jedi are afraid of, obviously,” he answered immediately.

Figures, Ezra thought.

“Well, I do like to mix the form that uses lots of acrobatic moves with the form that’s frowned upon the Jedi because of how aggressive it is,” he explained. “I do not have much patience for defending myself and waiting for the right moment, so I simply headed the other way.”

More than less purely offensive fighting style, Ezra guessed.

It was indeed. Shadow took a few steps back and then he jumped.

He didn’t need a rotating blade to make it whirl furiously, the blazing edges of his lightsaber – now activated on both ends – moving so fast it was almost impossible to follow it with a naked eye.

Shadow himself also appeared to be constantly moving and shifting, disturbingly fast and powerful, and unstoppable.

Ezra observed, with eyes wide open, while his mind still trying to comprehend the fact that the man was able to move like that despite everything. Another horrid realization followed: there still were people capable of defeating him, the soft clang of the metal legs hitting against the ground was serving as an absolute proof.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of headcanons wormed their way into this one.  
> I've tried to keep them under control and not drop them like a random trivia all over the place, but still.  
> Lots and lots about Maul, some of the things hiding in the corners and hiding.


	6. That Bad Feeling

 

The thin branch hit him in the face like a razor blade, instantly cutting through the skin and leaving burning sensation of pain, but there was no time to care for such things.  
There was no time for anything.

Ezra was running, panic grasping at his heart, while the roots and tangled mess of wild grass were trying to trip him.  
And if he fell, he probably wouldn't be able to get up, not with his lungs burning painfully like that, not when the desperation and fear were the only sources of energy inside him that were not already deplenished.

The steady buzz of the lightsaber was following close by, thundering in Ezra's ears each time the Inquisitor used it to cut his own path through the branches instead of avoiding them like Ezra was forced to do.  
He was getting closer and closer, while Ezra barely could move forward.

"There's nowhere to run, little-Jedi," The Inquisitor voice seemed to be coming from every direction at the same time, surrounding Ezra like a cage.

With heart feeling like it was going to get stuck in his throat and suffocate him at any moment, Ezra desperately pushed forward.

"It is only a matter of time," the Inquisitor continued.

Ezra grit his teeth, concentrating on making one step after another on the legs that already felt, like they were made of lead, burning with pain that brought tears to his eyes.

It was a matter of time indeed.  
One of Ezra's knees gave up. Moment later, the ground painfully smashed into him, pushing out what little left of air was inside of his lungs.  
Ezra desperately tried to breathe, but all that got inside his mouth was dirt. He spat and spluttered, but it was already down his throat, turning into a lump of clay that blocked his air track.

Still, he reached out and dig his fingers deep into the foliage in front of him, scratching at the roots and letting the sticks and stones scratch against his skin.

Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself forward, refusing to make it easy for the Inquisitor, giving all what was left of his strength just to move a few inches further.  
The inquisitor stopped next to him, armored boots reflecting blinding light, bits and pieces of wood cracking under his weight.

"This," he stated coldly, his deep voice announced by a buzz of a lightsaber. "Is your fate."

 

    
xxx

 

Ezra opened his eyes rapidly and pushed himself up. The Inquisitors... he needed to get up, he needed to move...  
He pushed himself up, off the surface he was lying on.

The world whirled around and tipped over as he crashed onto the floor.

The floor...

It was familiar despite being made of metal and there were his shoes set up nearby, with a wrapped of a food ration hid behind them because this evening he felt too lazy to throw away the trash like he was supposed to do.

"...Ezra!"

He wasn't on the run anymore, he was safe and with Shadow, who was now looking at him with worried expression on his face, his yellow eyes shining in the darkness.

"I'm okay, I'm okay..." Ezra said, hoping his voice wasn't breaking too much. His throat ached and was uncomfortably dry.

"Let's get you off that floor," Shadow said. "you up to that?"

"Sure," Ezra nodded. The Zabrak put a hand on his shoulder before doing anything else, probably making sure that Ezra was fully awake and not still stuck inside of a dream.

"Sorry for waking you up like that."

"I don't sleep much."

"Definitely less than before meeting me," Ezra murmured. It wasn't the first time he woke up like that and he highly doubted that it was the last one either.

It was an embarrassing show of weakness and he honestly felt bad. Shadow didn't deserve to be dragged out of bed all the time just because this random kid he found dying on the ground suffered from bad dreams.

The lack of sleep wasn't making things any easier. He was always tired, he felt clumsy, he was getting irritated far too often and then he was getting annoyed even more, remembering how such things were not supposed to influence the Jedi.  
He was one, or at least Ezra really wanted to think that he was getting close to being one.

"How I make it stop?"

"The dreams?" Shadow asked.

"Yeah," Ezra nodded and looked down. Even under the pants, the artificial leg didn't look quite right. The fabric was lying in the wrong way, the folds were too deep, reaching where it would be impossible in case of real flesh. "I don't need them. I already know what had already happen to me. I don't need more thing to remind me about it again and again!"

"Things are not going to leave you alone just because you wish them to do so," Shadow pointed out softly.

"I know," Ezra groaned. "But that doesn't change the fact... I feel like I'm not going to be good at anything!"

"You're learning. Knowledge leads to power, but it also takes a lot of time," Shadow reminded him.

"I know!" Ezra shook his head. "I just... I feel like I'm not good enough!"

"You are going to be better."

"What makes you so sure?"

Shadow shrugged. "I did.”

Ezra tried to smile. It was a nice feeling to be reassured just like that, a feeling that was filling him with warmth and gratitude. However at the same time, it was making him feel even more inadequate. He was not like Shadow at all.

Shadow was like an unstoppable force, going forward no matter what and against all odds. Meanwhile Ezra more than once was threw around by the whims of fate and could do absolutely nothing to regain even a little bit of control over his own life.

   

xxx

 

The marketplace was loud, colorful, filled with life and words of many languages, living with its own life despite the Empire's presence in the system.  
Ezra looked around, trying to return to the mindset of getting stuff done, but Lothal was far away and the times also have changed.

Still, there was stuff to be done and Shadow was sticking out like a sore thumb, his tattoos making him ridiculously easy to recognize, while Ezra could pose as a street rat with ease, the annoying limp only making thing appear even more real than before.

Swallowing a groan, Ezra looked around, trying to spot things he actually needed to get among the dozens of tiny, messy stands.  
It was awhile since he was in such a crowd; Shadow was a loner and the Ghost crew wasn't usually hanging around other people too, so it was very odd and quite disconnecting to suddenly be in the middle of this chaos.

On the other hand, the crowd was making things much easier for him; when people were rubbing against each other just to walk through it was beyond easy to slip his hand into a pocket or a purse and sweep a handful of credits without anyone noticing. Credits, he definitely needed. Shadow handed him over a whole bunch of these before sending him for the shopping trip, but still, the more the better, especially since the list wasn't exactly short.

Clothes, were pretty much first on his list.

Ezra sighed, missing his awfully orange jumpsuit. The thing was so warm and had many useful pockets and was generally great. Now it was lost and gone forever and he needed to find something new. Preferably something that would not stick out too much, something with lots of pockets. And probably a hood too, getting his hair wet every time there was a job during a bad weather was getting more and more annoying.

Idly wandering around and trying to spot anything interesting, Ezra did the grocery shopping. He even paid for most of the stuff; it was mostly the "spacer food", always cheap and either sold as small boxes of powder or tubes of paste. It tasted just like it looked like, but it could be stored for decades. Besides that, a bit of dried stuff and just enough of actually fresh things to last for the next two days.

After a few hours, he was mostly done.

The backpack was a pleasant weight on his shoulders, there was a new - well, definitely not new-new and there were holes in the pockets and some other damage - jacket under his arm along with two sets of clothes that actually fit. Ezra was about to leave the marketplace, when, with a corner of his eye, he noticed something off.

Or someone.

It was just a feeling, because the man - a young one, with hair trimmed short in a way that reminded Ezra of the cadets from the Imperial Academy - wasn't doing anything suspicious.

He was just... there, browsing like everyone else through the offered items; he was standing next to the shop that offered random electronic parts and was checking out something small and round Ezra couldn't quite recognize over the distance between them.

Still, long time ago, way before he meet Kanan and learned about the Force, he knew that that uneasy feeling deep inside his stomach actually meant something, something important.

The man, whoever he was, meant danger.

Ezra swallowed and carefully, slowly moved, so he would disappear from the field of vision of the stranger; it was a bit of a guess on his part, the man was wearing glasses that obscured the upper side of his face.

Going back to the ship right now was tempting, but it was also risky and with the hair still standing up on the back of his neck Ezra decided that he wasn't up for bringing trouble home. Even if it was just a newly discovered paranoia playing tricks on his mind, it felt safer to circle for a bit more in the city, to hide and wait.

“Just what in the world?” Ezra muttered, leaning against the wall. The sky over him had a pretty violet-fuchsia color and no answers.

 

xxx

   

"How was your trip?" Shadow asked when he finally came back.

There was no comment on how late he was, but nonetheless, Ezra felt a bit stupid about the whole thing. Out of nowhere his brain just decided that a random stranger was a danger, so he ended up spending a lot of time trying to lose the imaginary tail.

"Okay, I guess," Ezra finally said, pulling out the supplies and setting them up in the right places. There was no reason to make a mess. There were also other things to concentrate on than his newfound raging paranoia, much more pleasant things.

"I've got fresh stuff too," Ezra smiled. "So we cook of we grill?"

"Boiling would be just a waste," Shadow stated.

Ezra nodded. Boiling, soups and stews happened to supplies that were a bit older; besides it was so long since he ate something like that! just thinking about meat sizzling on the grill along with nice, fresh vegetables and those funny, bun-shaped mushrooms that were both very cheap and a very popular item on the local food stands, was making him salivate.

"This is the only thing I miss," Ezra said, after they were finished with eating and he was carefully putting away all the leftovers. "Since I started flying you know? Travelling is cool, helping people is awesome...but I do miss the food."

"Is this similar to things from your home?"

"Not at all," ezra shook his head, still smiling. "Lothal was like... grains, lots of it and many different, something about having good ground and temperature for these and fruits, but there wasn't much meat going around? At least not at my place."

Though that could be because of the Empire screwing up both the economy and the ecology of the place, setting up factories and bases, where once were the open fields and other things.

"You miss it," Shadow stated.

"Yeah, of course I do," Ezra nodded. "But... it hurt, to see it changing more and more because of the Empire and not being able to do a thing about it. "

He swallowed.

"We fought and fought and we helped some and even got stuff out of this for the Rebellion, but in the end, the Empire just got pissed off and made things more difficult for not only us, but the normal people too."

"That's a fairy basic tactic, making your enemy feel guilty enough to quit," Shadow stated in a matter of fact voice, slowly starting to clean up after their dinner.

Ezra felt a pang of annoyance. They were talking about real people here, suffering and hungry and all that because the Empire turned towards them when the officers realized the Ghost crew was too difficult to catch. Shadow however was talking about it if it was just some weird theoretical model.

"There's no need to stick around for longer," Shadow said. "While you were away I made sure the ship is in good flying condition."

"How do you think we should work then?" Ezra asked, not done with the previous topic. "Fighting the Empire, I mean?"

"Usually assassinating the people with actual power do the trick," Shadow replied dryly. "Even if the whole structure is not going to fail, it would provide enough chaos for you to move much more freely. Then again it also hands your enemy quite strong arguments about the rebels being just terrorists..."

"There's no winning in this then?"

"Think of it more like a trade - you get one thing in exchange for other. Now, you just need to decide what is the thing you truly need."

"That's..." Ezra started, but couldn't find the right word. Dark? Bad? Sad? Sounded like there was something really wrong with the world?

"When are we leaving?" he finally only sighed deeply.

"I do not see any reason to stay here any longer," Shadow said with a small shrug. "Sleeping in hyperspace just just the same as sleeping planetside."

Ezra wanted to protest, to say that it was much nicer when the engines were not humming and when there was real fresh air to breathe in, but he didn't.

The bad feeling was back, along with flash of a memory from the marketplace.

Or maybe it was just the fact that he was so used to running away from the Inquisitors that ticking to one place just felt wrong.

Whatever.

Ezra wanted off this planet.

 

xxx

   

The engines hummed as the ship rose up into the air, however Ezra could not felt the relief he was expecting. Instead, all his muscles were so tense his whole body was aching. With his head glued to the window, he looked down, at the place where they spend the night.

It was quite away from the city, well hidden and small chunk of flat terrain hidden behind thick forest of completely green trees with wide, fleshy leaves and thorny flowers as big as human hand. There was no reason for anyone to head this way, the made sure to pick a secluded place.

Yet there was a lone speedster heading right towards where their ship rested just a minute ago. It stopped where the grass was flattened by the weight of the vessel and then the driver stood up looked straight at them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, look!   
> Instead of the usual fluff, an actual plot is crawling out of some dark corner!


	7. Dead End

Chapter 7: Dead End

Ezra shuddered, all of sudden feeling very, very cold.   
It was impossible and he knew it perfectly well, for whoever was driving that speedster to see him, to see anything besides the silhouette of their ship moving away from the ground.  
Yet he felt like the man looked straight at him, straight into his eyes.  
There was a promise in that look, Ezra felt it rippling through the space despite all that distance, a promise of meeting yet again, a promise of finding them no matter what.

"What is it?" Shadow noticed his distress. He had his head tilted slightly in his direction, while his hands were moving on their own, each push of the button getting them closer to jumping into the safety of the hyperspace.

"I have that bad feeling?" Ezra muttered, wrapping arms around himself, trying to regain some of the heat by rubbing his sides up and down. "I know this is ridiculous and all, but I feel like someone is following us."

And along with that someone, and impending feeling of doom was also hovering over his head.

"I think I'm just paranoid," Ezra said, shaking his head. "It was awhile since I was among so many people and it threw me off balance."

"If you say so," Shadow nodded.

Ezra furrowed his brow and looked at the man.

"You think I should trust my feelings more?" he asked. Kanan sometimes was saying stuff like that, about the Force warning them about danger, about leading them the right way, pointing in just the right direction.

Ezra never could tell apart it and his own imagination.

"I don't know," Shadow admitted. "I was trained as a Sith. The Sith are no followers. They bend things to their will instead."

Ezra nodded, feeling a little bit better, despite not getting any answers.

"The Jedi... did they follow the Force very often?"

"More like they followed their government," Shadow answered with a shrug. "However when it came to the Force, some of the Jedi were able to predict the future, had very strong instincts or could chase someone to the other side of the galaxy once they caught the trail."

"You think people still can do that?"

"Untrained?" Shadow raised an eyebrow. "Doubtful."

Ezra carefully nodded, trying to concentrate on his breathing.

He had all the answers he was looking for. Besides, in the hyperspace, no one could reach them.

"I'm going to listen through all the news we managed to download," he decided. "It's all propaganda, but there still could be something that would tell us just what is going on out there."

There was probably a lot of talking about how good the Empire was for the galaxy and how much progress was made in the Core Worlds and a lot of similar things. He was hunting for news that talked about victories over the Rebels and bringing peace to some Outer Rim regions.

While it still was just a propaganda and probably most of it made out of lies, it still helped them pinpoint the places where people were unrest to the point the Empire felt the need to lie about the situation on the Holo. And places where things were going on could lead him to the Rebels.

  


xxx

 

Making use of the little space that was available on the ship, Ezra was standing on his leg, keeping the metal one bend at the knee.  
It was difficult, to keep his back straightened up while the weight of the artificial leg was pulling him to the side.  
Standing on one leg was also supposed to be laughably easy, compared to what he was used to do and in much less safe, still environment. Right now it wasn't easy at all and he felt down more times than he remembered and all of it was today.

The ship was sliding through the hyperspace with ease, so Shadow was free to idly tinker with whatever machine was resting on his knees. From time to time he was glancing at Ezra, but decided to not comment on the failures at all.

With a groan, Ezra stood up once again. He was starting to consider dragging a blanket or a pillow here, so the landing would be less rough, but then again, it would mean that he was ready for failure. Which wasn't supposed to be the case, he was supposed to be set on overcoming whatever was thrown his way by the fate, he was supposed to be winning.

Standing up once again, Ezra raised up the prosthetic and continued with the challenge, furrowing his brow in concentration and mentally counting the passing seconds. With each try, it was less and less instead the other way around.

"Try doing something else," Shadow said.

"Starting ten different things at once doesn't seem like a good way to go..." Ezra murmured.

"You're growing tired and it's showing."

Ezra licked his lips. True, he was getting more and more annoyed with each failure, which made the failures to happens more often because of them, not to mention the new bruises were also voicing their opinion about the whole thing.

"You were training like that? Switching things around?"

"No," Shadow said, his eyes not leaving the thing he was tinkering with. "I was practicing one exercise up until it was completed. However it was centered on different things than just physical prowess."

"The Sith, they are using anger, aren't they?" Ezra guessed, stealing a peek at Shadow.

He was supposed to be careful about the Dark Side, Ezra knew that well. Kanan warned him over and over again how dangerous it could be, how easy is to fall if one is not wary… but the curiosity was still there.

Besides, Ezra was sure that being careful would be much easier if he knew what exactly he was supposed to avoid in the first place.

“They do,” Shadow replied softly. “The anger, the pain, the fear, they use it all.”

Ezra nodded, hoping to learn some more. Right now he had just a few words and it was impossible to build anything that made any sense from such tiny scraps like these.

“The problem is,” Shadow continued as he hoped. “It all has an end. The anger burns out, the wounds eventually heal and the fear… at some point all would get too tired to truly care. There’s nothing left then, but cinders and fading memories, nothing to build on.”

“That’s… sad,” Ezra said, unsure if it was even his place to speak.  
That was what Kanan was so afraid of? That was what fueled the Inquisitors, the fate that was awaiting them?

“The Jedi lost their way, partially because of the Sith and partially because there was nothing to challenge them anymore,” Shadow shook his head. “They were not the only ones, though. Somewhere during the millennia in hiding, things were lost to the Sith too. They’ve concentrated so much on the vengeance for the things committed so long ago, that they’ve lost the grasp of anything but.”

“So… everyone lost?”

“And nobody even noticed, “Shadow snickered. “Can you imagine?”

 

xxx

 

The lack of fuel forced them to visit another planet with an established settlement.  
It was Outer Rim and the settlement was much more of a pirate hideout than something under the Imperial Control.

Ezra honestly had no clue which one was a better option between those two.  
Maybe people here were more free and weren't forced to bow to the uniform and listen to the obligatory transmission praising the Emperor but they were still looking pretty damn miserable. In the moments when they were not looking like they were considering robbing him.

He was an outsider, he was unknown, they had no way of knowing what was sort of trouble was following them. Considering how grim and haunted the eyes of some of these people were, the darkness between the tired stares, they've earned their paranoia fair and square.

Ezra sighed.  
Shadow somehow managed to completely vanish in the, well... shadows. It was hard to tell how exactly he managed to do so, sticking out like a sore thumb with all these tattoos of his and bright red skin.

Sometimes Ezra wondered if Shadow was even real. Sometimes, he didn’t seem so.

Ezra, being a teenage boy, decided to do what any teenage boy would do - he let his stomach lead the way and stopped at the first place that looked like he wasn't going to get a food poisoning from eating there.

It was a very small place, with just a few tables available and that looked like he accidentally wandered into somebody's house.  
The bar - or a diner maybe, on each planet they had their own rules about naming places where there was warm food to buy - was filled with warmth and sweet and spicy smell of food and the tables were made from cheap material, already covered in scratches and cuts caused by being scrubbed clean way too many times.

There was a bar next to where kitchen entrance was, narrow and with only a few stools standing next by.  
Despite the early time, some of them were already occupied.  
Ezra tried not to stare too much; if people had something to drink away, it was none of his business. If anything, he felt a pang of guilt that he couldn't do more, that he couldn't chase away the Empire and all their worries.

Despite it all, the people were trying hard to just live their lives. There was a small family eating in the corner, two other people were working on datapads while taking a bite out of their plates from time to time.  
Twi'Lek waitress was circling gracefully among the guests, refilling the cups with fresh caf and taking orders, her golden brown skin surprisingly covered for a female member of her race.

Ezra idly wondered, if Hera would like to wear a frilly blouse like that someday, when she wouldn't have to fight anymore. It would be a nice look for her.

The woman continued her circle around the room up until she stopped by the kitchen and exchanges a bunch of words with someone invisible from where Ezra was sitting.

Partially wishing that he learned how to read from the lips and partially being ashamed of this very wish, Ezra decided to shift his attention elsewhere.  
There were some pictures on the wall, but the style was so odd, he didn't really get the meaning and the radio - slightly cranking up and buzzing from time to time - delivered the very usual, neutral mix of non-offensive songs that went straight over Ezra's head like they always did.

"Something is following you," the Twi’Lek woman spoke softly, suddenly right next to him, setting up a plate on the table without making a single noise.

Her accent was soft and clicking and completely different from how Hera used to talk. Ezra found it to be disconnecting enough, that he wasn't able to grasp the meaning behind the words despite them being spoken in Basic.

"Something very nasty," she continued, her eyes as intense as Hera’s, even if the color and shape were different. "Something that shouldn't be here. You eat, then you go, before it catches on to you."

Then, before he had the time to thank her, to even nod in gratitude for the warning, the woman hurried away, head low and shoulders bend.

Ezra looked down at his food, suddenly not feeling hungry anymore.

There were only so many things that could follow him and to guess what exactly approached wasn't all that difficult. Though how the Inquisitor managed to follow him to this very planet was beyond him.  
There was a hyperspace jump to cross and he was sure as hell that nobody had a chance to attach any form of device to Shadows ship. However, just standing on the street of an alien world and wondering how they were found wouldn't solve any problems.

So, Ezra grit his teeth and moved forward, first one step, then another.

He needed to find the Inquisitor. Or whoever the man so stubbornly chasing him was. Finding him would be the first step to understanding just how he was followed and then...

Ezra had no idea what then. Was he going to fight?

It was hard to tell if he was even able to take this guy on, his past experiences with the Grand Inquisitor and the rest of the Inquisitorium telling tales about how not ready to fight he was.  
On the other hand, it was just one man. Just one person on a completely unfamiliar ground, lost among the narrow streets of not so great part of the city. The slums were Ezra's natural habitat, the place where he lived since he was a kid barely able to write down a few sentences in Aurabesh.

Yes, Ezra nodded to himself. If he was going to spot the person who was following him, he would make them step right into a trap, just like any other Imperial.

With any luck, he could completely avoid the Inquisitor himself; all he needed to do was to find his spaceship and sabotage it. And that was childsplay; Sabine used to talk all day long about how to break ships without making them look broken. Then she quizzed the rest of the crew about it. Ezra quickly learned to listen to her with care - the prize for winning was usually a sweet fruit or something like that. Since joining the Ghost crew he wasn't starving, not even close to it, but old habits didn't want to just drop dead the moment there was a steady access to food.

People were passing him on the streets, dealing with their daily lives. They were venturing into the shops, small and hidden in the dim lighted cellars, while the upper levels served as apartments. There were street vendors, loud, obnoxious and serving all sorts of suspicious food items as well as just simple knick-knacks and cheap jewelry.

Despite all that walking, there was no sight of the Inquisitor, though.

Ezra sighed deeply. He was getting tired, his legs were already protesting and he probably just should head back to ship.  
Maybe the Twi'Lek woman just mistook him for someone else. Maybe it was just his raging paranoia.  
It would be a good idea to just talk over the whole thing with shadow. Maybe he had some ideas, or at least some sort of a clue to solve this mess.

When the moon was spilling the light on the outskirts of the city, Ezra felt a pang of something. It was like a destiny brushed its fingers against the back of his neck, or maybe it was just the Force calling his attention to something special.  
Ezra obediently turned, searching for what he was supposed to see.

A small group was just entering an alley, no more than four people. A human - at least she looked like - woman with dark, curly hair, a man in a hooded jacket, a shadow of someone big and a Nautolan.  
By all means, they could be just a group of wanderers, nomads who were trying to find their place in the galaxy taken over by the Empire, or maybe they were a group of merchants or mercenaries. So many possibilities.   
There were just small signs though, almost insignificant gestures, but at the same time, these things were all too similar to what caught his attention when it came to the Ghost crew. Besides the Force-users.

The Force was the power that actually pushed him towards the group; without it calling him, the curiosity would not be strong enough to make Ezra act, to take a risk bigger that usually...  
  
Now there was a similar decision right in front of him.   
People who were members of the rebellion were right in front of him. All Ezra had to do was to walk forward and talk to them and the way home would be finally revealed.   
His eyes burned and the vision became blurry, as Ezra imagined meeting everyone again. Hera's soft voice, Zeb's strong hand jovially smashing into his back with enough power to push him forward, Sabine's snarky comments while her eyes shone...   
  
Ezra closed his eyes and lowered the binoculars.   
He wanted to go. He really, truly wanted to go, his hears felt like it was going to tear itself out of his chest and jump forward, leaving a bloody mess and rationality behind.   
  
The cold facts were not going away. There clearly was an Inquisitor following Ezra. With a tail such as this, he couldn't risk contacting the Rebels; the Inquisitors were smart and they were sharp and while they worked outside of the usual Imperial chain of command, they still operated alongside the Imperial Agents. Just few words passed between them and everything would break apart.   
  
Ezra grit his teeth and hit the ground with his closed fist, concentrating on how his nerves flared up in pain, protesting being treated so roughly. The choice wasn't even taken out of his hands. It never belonged to him in the first place.   
  
Slowly, carefully, Ezra backed away, trying to not think about the rebel cell, trying to not think about what he wanted, about what could've been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the next chapter: things go awry. With a bang.


	8. The Fall

**Chapter 8**

**The Fall**

"You are in a bad mood," of course, there was no hiding from Shadow. Just one look and the man was seeing through the best brave face Ezra was able to muster.

"I think I saw a group of rebels today," he said with a sight, because there was no reason to lie.

Shadow waited patiently for him to continue.

"I don't know for sure, but it felt like they were what I was looking for," Ezra looked at the window, but the white flashes of hyperspace noise outside held no answers. "And I could just walk there and talk to them."

Ezra would like to tell that when returning to the ship he didn't imagine all the what if's, but it would be a lie.  
In his mind's eye, the unfamiliar people had voices and faces. They not always knew the answers he was looking for - so many different varieties of the same situation blossomed in his head - but they always knew the way he was supposed to travel back home.

"I am pretty damn sure that we are followed," Ezra continued, shaking the imaginary world off. "I'm not sure if that person is an Inquisitor or someone else... but we are. He's out there and I couldn't just risk it."

"Reasonably so," Shadow nodded. "If the person who's tracking us has some ties to the Empire, then it would be foolish to call any attention to the rebels."

"So... you are believing me?" Ezra blinked. "Just like that?"

"The Force doesn't exactly use words to communicate things," Shadow gave him a small, crooked smile. "The intuition is a much better tool, though it takes time and effort to learn how to tell it apart from your own wishes."

"Can you feel it too?"

"Our pursuer?" Shadow asked, tilting his head to the side. "No. to tell the truth, for the longest time I wasn't paying any attention to what the Force was trying to tell me."

"Really?"

"Sometimes a lesson takes awhile to stick," he commented dryly. "You should take advantage of this ability."

"The guy must be much better, though. He's able to find us even after a hyperspace jump."

"Oh, but you are aware of the danger. "

"What are you suggesting then? To pick up the battlefield?”

"When you are ready."

And when that would be? Ezra thought, feeling annoyed at his companion.  
Were they really going to just jump from one planet to another, hoping the fuel would not run out and the short stops during the trip would be enough to gather enough supplies to not starve?  
That was hardly deserving to being called living.

Not to mention... He wanted back. He wanted to be back home so painfully much it felt like his heart was already broken and bleeding. Standing it for the next weeks? Months? More? It was hard to even imagine.  
There was only one way to solve this problem: Ezra needed to find a way to escape this trap by setting his own set of snares, just like Shadow said.

  


xxx

 

Either creating a trap was much more difficult that Ezra even imagined it to be, or he was just plain terrible at the job.

At times, he felt like a character from the child story about an orphan who wandered into a gundark nest only to be picky about which bed to sleep in.  
The existence of the beds was always very confusing to Ezra, because these were gundarks the story was about, but the situation mirrored his own quite decently.

The first planet they stopped by, was mostly a forest, green and empty, with grass and bushes tangled on the ground level, making it very hard to move around.  
It was a good training ground - though it was probably chosen as their destination because Shadow had an obvious soft spot for greenery - but it would be a terrible place to deal with the Inquisitor; It was a very unfamiliar territory of Ezra, who was used to mountains and flat grasslands.

Second place wasn't any better, though for completely different reasons; it was a station located on an asteroid, big enough to safely build a big, shielded structure that functioned both as a small city and as a refueling station, since it was set on the crossroads of two hyperspace lanes.  
People were somehow living in this odd place and there was surprisingly many of them, all stuffed under the thin dome of energy that kept the cold void of space away.

It was quite scary - same as scary were the prices of any food item that was even vaguely fresh - powdered proteins and vegetables were much, much cheaper to transport, though it was difficult to say how much meat and real vegetables were actually mixed in these odd powders.

Because of all these people, explosives way too close for comfort and everything relying on the machines to keep the base alive, it would be probably the worst place to pick up a fight with anyone who had a weapon more dangerous than a simple stick.

Still, each day he was either learning something new or practicing the skills he already knew, be that sneaking through the alleys and trying to follow people of his choosing without being noticed or moving through a difficult terrain without getting entangled in the weed or slowing down.

By the third planet, Ezra was losing his patience.

 

xxx

 

"How old is this place?" Ezra asked, looking around with curiosity.

The planet, bathed in the warm but dim light of a red giant.

"Old," Shadow replied softly.

Ezra felt his eyebrow twitching, because this wasn't telling him anything.

On the other hand... yeah. It would be difficult to find a world that would suit the place better than the one they both already used.

The big, stone tiles they were walking on were rough and broken, with weed peeking from the cracks.  
High statues, once guarding the path, were either broken to the point it was hard to tell what they were supposed to represent or topped over, falling one on another like pieces of domino.

Away, he could spot something that looked like a small village. However, it was completely overtaken by nature at this point, with trees going proudly through the beaten down roofs and holes in the walls, while the black leaved vines were climbing over everything in their reach, slowly but surely destroying it.

The once flat and empty fields, a little bit similar to those on Lothal that were filled with wheat before the Empire came, were also the victims of nature taking over, trees and bushes hungrily reclaiming what once was theirs.  
Over it all, a humongous structure was standing, one that was reaching up and up into the skies, with only stone steps on the outside leading far, far up.  
It felt like the building was looking at them with the empty, black windows, judging.

"What was this place anyway?"

"A Jedi Temple," Maul answered with a shrug.

"...aren't Inquisitors hanging out around places like these?" Ezra asked, furrowing his brow. "And the Imperials too?"

"It was abandoned early in the Clone Wars," Shadow explained. "While it is quite on the ancient side, it never served as anything but the training ground. So, nothing precious was to be found here anyway."

"Why they left it?"

"They didn't have much choice," Shadow continued with a small shrug. "We're currently deep into once were Separatists territories. Once the war began, they had no choice but to leave this place."

And then, Ezra thought, it was too late. The once great place was left to rot.

Still, among the ruins, there were echoes of what it once was. It was all too easy, to let his imagination roam and fill the place with kids, trying their skills at taking down scarecrows and maybe some sort of a training droids, running around and making noise, while the adults supervising them were just tolerating all that chaos and tried to enjoy the weather.

"Why are we here, then?" Ezra asked, shaking off the idyllic images. "Even if the Jedi left something behind, it was surely ransacked long ago."

If not by the Separatist armies looking for supplies and a place to build a base of operations, then just the usual grave diggers, pirates and thrill seekers.

"Is there something hidden inside?" he kept guessing. "Like something where you need to use the Force to get an access to? Or are we just sightseeing?"

Shadow snorted.

"There are no secret chambers here, at least not to my knowledge," he said. "So you might say sightseeing is what we are doing here."

"That can't be all of it!" Ezra protested.

It could be yet another training ground, but it didn't sit with Ezra well. There were many, many worlds either completely lacking any signs of civilization or with small pockets here and there, which were easy to avoid if someone wanted to.  
This place? It felt much, much more special, it felt like it was chosen on purpose, but the reasoning behind that decision was escaping Ezra.

Was it Shadow trying to give him some connection with the Jedi? Was it a lesson of some sort? Or was it just an odd hobby of his, visiting old temples?

"You seem to have a good intuition," Shadow said. "Even if there's nothing material to find here, you should be able to brush your fingers against the past."

A lesson then, Ezra thought.

"What I'm looking for?"

"How would I know that?" Shadow raised an eyebrow at him, clearly baffled by the question. "I am no Jedi."

"Rright," Ezra nodded.

He looked up at the temple, suddenly feeling intimidated by the building. The last time he entered one of those, he ended up taking a test that was still visiting his nightmares. Especially now, mixed with running and running, and running-

Ezra bit his lip, hard enough for the pain to bring him back, but not to the point of breaking through the skin.  
This was not the time for being anxious and he had faced much more scary, more real things since then.

"What are you going to do?"

"Sightseeing," Shadow replied with a grin.

Okay, Ezra sighed. It was official, the guy was a weird space tourist after all. It was a small wonder there were no odd selfies glued to the walls inside of the ship. Guess Shadow was a knick-knack person.

Shadow, being himself, disappeared to do his own thing. Or maybe this time it was him giving Ezra space, it was difficult to guess.

With a small sight, Ezra moved forward, making his first steps up the stairs.  
They were as damaged as the rest of the road, with small chunks of the stone breaking off and crunching under his feet, but they were also big enough for the damage to be insignificant. The stairs were going up and up for quite awhile, until it reached a wide platform. Then there was another set of stairs and up above, Ezra could spot yet another platform.

The whole structure seemed to be circling around the building, leading higher and higher with no doors or windows wide enough to serve as an entrance.

"What a weird place," Ezra muttered.

He stopped for a moment, to catch his breath and to look down, just to check how high he managed to climb.

The abandoned settlement was spread on the ground, the buildings set up in a pattern that was impossible to spot from the ground level. Despite all the destruction, it looked peaceful and warm.

"Weird but pretty," he corrected himself, sitting down on the stone.

It didn't feel like it really mattered for him to climb up all the way. It felt just fine for him to stay just where he was, looking at the peaceful, lost world.

Ezra didn't know if he was meditating for an hour or only a minute had passed, when a brush of something touching his elbow startled him back up on his feet, hand ready to reach for the lightsaber that wasn't there.

There was a woman, standing over him. Her robes looked almost black in the light of the red sun and she was wearing them like they were the most beautiful thing in the entire galaxy. Her long, dark hair were braided in a very complicated way and there was a crooked smile twisting her full lips. Despite that, her expression is warm and peaceful.

"Who are-" Ezra started, but then he noticed the temple behind the woman.

It was the same place he closed his eyes in and it still was wearing the signs of being an ancient, stone building, but there were no weeds peeking from the cracks in the stones. The surface looked clean and there were hardly any pebbles breaking off.  
The temple also looked alive.

There were people, actual living people moving around. He could see humans and a Nautolan and a Zabrak who had coloring of autumn leaves and so many more.

He looked down, already knowing there were no ruins for him to see. Indeed, the building were whole, the ground nearby was neat and filled with children mostly running around with only a few strong willed enough to do some sort of a physical exercise, while a bigger, robed figure was dozing off in the grass.

"I still don't get it, Master."

Another voice, right next to him.

Ezra raised his head, to see a human teenager, about the same age as he was. The boy had an odd haircut with a small braid dangling on the side of his tan face.

"Why are we learning how to use the swords, when we shouldn't be fighting?" the boy asked. The tone of his voice, the way his lips moved when he talked. It looked familiar, so familiar, but Ezra didn't dare to think about it.

"Learning how to hand a sword is never only about the sword," the Jedi master said.

"I know," with a roll of his eyes, the boy continued to argue. "It help us to strengthen our will, soul and whatever else fits. But if we know how to use the sword, wouldn't we end up using it more often?"

"An expert swordsman knows how to use his blade," the woman smiled. "The wise man knows how to win without pulling it out."

A hush of wind picked up the dust and tossed pebbles around, but neither the master nor the Padawan reacted in any way. Even their robes did not move at all. Where they were standing, the air was calm.

Ezra shook his head, blinking away the vision.

The sight of the ruins was much more striking after seeing this place thriving with life. However there was a hum of a spaceship engine cutting through the air, getting stronger with every passing second. It didn't sound like theirs mandalorian Gauntlet.

"Well," Ezra said, standing up. "It seems like some people have no choice but to pull out the blade."

 

xxx

 

Stuffing a thermal detonator in the hole in the wall of an ancient Jedi temple felt like a blasphemy, but Ezra did it anyway.

Beggars cannot be choosers and he felt that there was only so much time of running away between him and madness. It felt better to end it all here, now.

There was a time to set up traps and with Shadow being a hoarder there was an unhealthy dose of things he could use to turn the terrain into a death trap.  
Tripwires and a few detonators attached, some of the nasty bombs anyone could cook up in the basement of their home that Sabine taught him how to make and a paralyzing trap crafted from parts of a fully charged blaster and some junk...

Ezra closed his eyes, recalling just how he set up everything. It would be pretty damn dumb of him to step into his own trap after all.

Time sluggishly crawled forward and nothing, absolutely nothing was happening, leaving Ezra restless and getting more and more sure with every passing minute that it was all inside his head, that he just saw the ship on the sky because he was so used to running away, that not having a hunter chasing him felt too unnatural to stand it.

Then, there he was.

A lone figure slowly climbing up the stairs, pace steady and almost robotic. It was the same person Ezra saw on that marketplace, he recognized him instantly.

Taking a deep breath, Ezra forced himself to stay calm, to wait for his opponent to get closer.

This time there was a helmet on his head, black and with a visor covering the upper part of his face, making it impossible to read his expression.  
There also was that characteristic, dark armor Ezra remembered all too well. Oddly enough, there was a jacket thrown over it, leather-like and dark-purple.

Odd, Ezra decided. All the other Inquisitors he saw didn't show any signs of individualism and, besides having their armor to best fit their body shape, they looked alike.

The Inquisitor suddenly raised his head and looked straight at Ezra.

"Shit," he muttered and stepped away. "He concentrated so much on observing his opponent, he let him get too close for comfort.

Quickly shifting on his feet, he baited the young man to climb higher up.

As expected, the Inquisitor followed, slightly quickening his pace.  
At least there was only one path he could walk through, Ezra thought, furrowing his eyebrows in concentration. Just a few steps and-

The Inquisitor, either noticing the tripwire or being simply lucky, stepped right over it and then he passed the next one.

"Oh no, you don't!" Ezra hissed and reached out. Using the Force on something so small and light as the string was easy.

Ground shook as the explosion roared right behind the inquisitor, bringing dust up in the air and smashing into him with pebbles and chunks of rocks turned projectile.  
Ezra hissed with satisfaction, despite already knowing that it wasn't enough to knock out his enemy. But this was just the first shot, just the warning.

As expected, the Inquisitor soon emerged from the cloud of dust, shielding his face with his sleeve. Ezra already escaped higher up, using the end of the platform and the stairs leading higher up. The angle created a nice niche, just the right place for him to hide from sight line of his enemy and the incoming debris from another explosion.

This one was bigger, meaner, followed by a secondary wave of things blowing up, filling the space with chunks of metal and shrapnel.

Maybe this time-

His hopes were cut down by the characteristic buzz of the red lightsaber, the red light dimmed by all the dust floating around, joining the red shine of the giant in the skies.  
The Inquisitors once again emerged victorious, double blades of his lightsaber spinning madly.

"Damn, didn't thought of using this as a shield!" Ezra grunted.

He was getting out of traps and has pretty much trapped himself on the stairs of the temple.  
The only good thing about the whole situation was the fact that the explosions were both loud and visible from afar.

Rushing higher up, not wasting time to turn around and check if he was being followed - because he was, of course he was, the dark side was pulsing in the air in almost the same rhythm his heart was beating, foretelling impending doom - Ezra set of the thermal detonator off.

Moment later, ground shook under his feet as the ground protested and cracked, followed by a powerful gust of wind that send him on his knees.

Just how Sabine was dealing with all this? His ears were ringing, he felt like not only his mouth but his lungs were filled with dust and it was hard to see anything with teary eyes.  
Coughing, Ezra looked around, trying to spot the red light. It wasn’t there and there was no sound either, though this could be caused by being deafened by all these explosives and not because he was finally alone.

“Where…” he muttered, reaching for the Force.   
Now it was so much more difficult than before, not only because the ringing inside his ears was making it hard to concentrate, but because the person he was looking for was hiding his presence.

Then he found him. The dark presence, grim and unpleasant, bringing back all the memories Ezra desperately wanted to keep buried forever. All the fear, all the pain he had felt, it was all waking up inside his head, like the person slowly walking towards him was able to awake it.

"Who are you?" Ezra asked, stepping away. "Why are you following me?!"

"This is going to take just a moment," the Inquisitor said softly. "Do not move."

Ezra felt the Force warning him even before he heard the familiar buzz. He jumped away, just in time to avoid being cut down by the edge of long, red blade.

"You were not supposed to move," the man pointed out, stepping forward.

Ezra grit his teeth.

He had no weapon on his own and grabbing just anything to defend himself was not going to work in this case: lightsabers were able to cut through almost anything safe for other lightsabers and one was surely not lying among the trash somewhere around.

"I don't want to fight you!" he said, with the absurd hope that somehow, the Inquisitor would feel for the bluff.

He didn't, of course.

"This is not a matter of choosing," was the answer, as the man made another step forward.

"It can be," Ezra tried again. "You don't sound like you're all that into fighting either!"

"You misunderstand," the edges of Inquisitors lips twitched slightly, as if he was about to smile. "This is not a matter of choosing for either of us. You are going to die here, for I am going to kill you. This is a fact."

"That doesn't even make sense!" Ezra protested. Then he had to jump away again, because the Inquisitor was done with words.

The buzz of the red lightsaber was unforgiving and indifferent to his pleas, just as much as the face of the Inquisitor was lacking any expression at all.

Ezra cursed and looked around, then swallowed another set of curses, this time much more vile.  
He was stuck, with the Inquisitor blocking his path back down, to the ship. It was definitely too high to just jump down and Ezra was not going to risk it when there was someone with a lightsaber just waiting to cut him down.  
The only way was up then, through that was was just stalling the inevitable.

Ezra made the first step backwards, the dirt on the ancient stones cracking and shifting under his boot, while the Force spilled around.  
He had no reason to hide now, when he was already found and the only hope was for the Shadow to understand just what was going on.

"There's nowhere to run," the Inquisitor continued. "Accept your fate."

"Dying is definitely not it!" Ezra barked back.

They were going up and up, the world growing small beneath them, while the stairs of the ancient site seemed to have no end. The stone was cracked and pieces of it - sometimes huge chunks forcing Ezra to crawls and roll and jump backwards - were missing, but there was no dirt or tiny pieces of rubble anymore. The higher they were, the stronger the wind was, mercilessly attacking them from all directions.

With hair wavering in the wind, getting into his mouths and eyes, Ezra desperately tried to not lose his balance and the sight of the enemy in front of him.

The buzz of the red lightsaber was unsteady now, broken by the wind and the tiny bits of things smashing into it's surface and burning instantly, but the light, the light was much easier to follow here, even the tiniest movement visible and predictable.

"This is the end," the Inquisitor said. "There's nowhere else to go."

"It is," Ezra agreed, his voice hoarse so much it hurt to talk. He wasn't even sure if he was heard - powerful wind seemingly swallowed the words the moment they were leaving his lips.

No more steps behind him, just the surprisingly wide, flat surface of cracked, age's old stone beneath his feet.

Just why the Force was insisting on leading him here? Of all the places, there was absolutely nothing to be found here.  
Nothing but death.

And that, Ezra simply refused to let happen. Not now, not when there was a war to be fought, not when there were people that needed to be protected from the Empire, not when his newfound family was unaware what happened to him. And Shadow, Shadow was important too...

Because the familiar, sharp shape of red and black Mandalorian ship slowly circled the temple.

"You!" the Inquisitor hissed, showing emotions for the first time. "You were stalling!"

"I was," Ezra replied.

He wanted to say more, he wanted to give the Inquisitor the option of surrender, he wanted to tell him that there was no need to work for the Empire, that he could just leave it behind.  
The Inquisitor never gave him the chance. Ignoring the ship nearby, the man leaped forward, furiously attacking.

Ezra had no other choice but to dodge and then dodge away, each time the red blade missed hym by mere inches.  
He needed to get away, much further than he was now, because otherwise... otherwise Maul would not be able to get a clear shot-

Ezra froze, the thought of leaving someone, anyone just to get shot down by a blaster fire on purpose was too dark and overwhelming.  
He probably did something like that before, in the heat of battle, but it was different than just willingly letting someone be killed like that.

"Ezra!"

Shadows voice brought him back to reality, just in time to see the red blade heading right towards him.

There was no time to do anything but to drop on the ground, so Ezra did just that. He hit the stones hard enough to render himself breathless, but somehow Ezra managed to roll away a moment before the lightsaber crashed into the ground.

With the corner of his eye, he could see Shadow standing on the wind of his ship - autopilot, he thought - before the ground under his back suddenly ended and he crashed down the stairs.

Desperately clawing at the stones, Ezra tried to stop rolling down, towards the sharp edge and nothingness that lied beyond.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you it was going to be a bang.
> 
> -  
> Hello and sorry for a long period of inactivity! Life... sorta happened and I still need to recharge my batteries. Accidentally falling down into different fandoms wasn't helping any, apparently I shouldn't be allowed to even re-watch old favorites.


	9. Paradigm Shift

**Chapter 9**

**Paradigm Shift**

 

Ezra choked, fighting for breath. Dark lights and splashes of color were dancing in his field of vision and his brain worked sluggishly, as the consciousness brushed by.

The ringing in his ears intensified, pushing aside everything else.

 

No, Ezra thought desperately. No!

He needed to stay awake, he desperately needed to stay awake, because if not, if not-

 

He hungrily inhaled, just to choke on the all the dust floating in the air.

Despite it all, Ezra managed to roll over and push himself up on one arm, then move his other hand to do the same.

His lungs burned, his eyes were watering and he probably presented a truly miserably sight, still desperately coughing, nose stuffed and dripping, spit travelling down his chin.

 

Alive. He was alive, despite everything.

 

Finally, awkwardly, Ezra managed to push himself up just to drop right back onto his butt, world spinning around him in swirl of pulsating colors.

 

Breathe, he thought and tried to concentrate on this alone.

 

Ezra remembered falling down, the sight of ancient stone passing him by, the air pushing back against his body and the wild panic.

He tried to grasp at the wall, but he was going down way too fast; all that was gained from the tried was the burning sensation of fingernails snapping off.

By all means, Ezra should be dead.

He wasn't.

 

Carefully, he turned head first left, then right.

Wherever he was, it was filled with clouds of dust to the point it was difficult to see anything than puffs of smoke, but at the same time, he was able to see it.

There was a source of light, somewhere, then.

 

Ezra tried to push himself back up once again and winced as the sharp pang of pain ran through both of his forearms.

With a wince, he looked down. His fingers were bloody and swollen. It was going to be hard to grab anything with any sort of dexterity. Nothing seemed to be broken though, which Ezra counted among small miracles.

 

"Right," he muttered. "This is not the first weird cave I've felt in."

 

If anything, it was starting to look like a very bad habit, one that definitely needed to be get rid off.

 

Sucking on the finger that seemed to be hurting the most, Ezra slowly moved forward, trying to remember how the temple looked from the outside. Knowing that, even if being off, would be definitely helpful in finding his way out of this place.

He was marching down the corridor, probably walking deeper into the temple. There was no way of telling just high above the ground was the level he was on. 

Still, forwards was as good direction as any. 

It took Ezra a little while to realize that the walls themselves were the seemingly invisible source of light. There were complicated, mysterious shapes carved into them, spinning around each other in a tangled pattern of unfamiliar shapes.

Ezra had no idea what it all symbolized or what was the meaning behind the colors of the glass-like surfaces imbedded in the stone, but he was grateful for the light. 

 

Little pebbles crunched and shifted, filling the twisting and turning corridor with sound. 

It felt more lonely this way, only him walking among the empty, empty walls.

 

Ezra's mind returned to the vision that played in front of his eyes earlier, when things were still peaceful and he sighed heavily.

He could imagine this place filled with footsteps and voices of people, bright and lively. 

 

"What a shame," he mumbled, pulling the finger out of his mouth. The air felt cold against the skin, soothing the abused flesh.

Wondering of what could've beens, Ezra walked through the corridor, even after he passed a fork in the road. Wherever the passage on the side led it didn't feel as important as the path he was following. 

 

The path ended suddenly, cut short by huge, two-winged doors, ancient and heavy, making Ezra feel small just by existing there.

He didn't know what they were made of, but the surface was rough against his fingers, darkened with age, the once mysterious details carved with care into the surface unrecognizable by now.

Ezra ran his fingers against the shapes, trying to guess what it was supposed to represent and where it was leading.

There was no lock nowhere to be seen, nor a panel nearby to open the doors, but just pushing against it did nothing; they were really heavy and the time probably sealed the wings shut together.

Ezra stepped back and braced himself, taking a deep breath, before he pushed against the door once more, using his whole body to do so.

 

Slowly, painfully so, the wings moved with a painfully loud, high-pitched creak of protesting, rusted metal.

Ezra slipped through the gap as soon as it was big enough for him to fit through and gasped.

 

Whatever mineral was used in the corridors to fill them with a bit of dimmed light, was inside of this room too, climbing up the far away walls in a tangled web of unfamiliar looking vines, filling the humongous space with greenish light.

Ezra slowly made a step forward and it echoed through the empty space, seemingly bouncing of the high walls all the way up, where the ceiling was... or was supposed to be; it was placed so high it was hard to see it. however the sheer size wasn't what made him gasp.

There were statues, high and mighty, with the vines wrapped around their bodies, looking down at the center of the room, calm and serene. 

Ezra slowly moved further into the room, enchanted by the sight. There was a Togruta woman, her lekku long and colored by blue stones reflecting the light, with hand raised in a gesture of blessing. Next to her a human male,  and a zabrak, both carved to look powerful yet gentle. And finally, in the middle of many, many more statues, there was a person with a mask carved on instead a face, with long cloak obscuring all of the body excluding the hands, both of them resting on a sword. 

 

"Whoa..." Ezra stared, standing in front of it, with his head up. He had no idea who these people were. He didn't know a lot of things and this place was making him feel small and inconsequential. Compared to these giants, he was just a boy, lost in the sea of stars. 

 

This feeling... wasn't exactly unpleasant. It was good to have a giant  standing nearby, even one made of stone, taking away the weight of the world just for this short moment. 

Then the reality crashed back at him, with a thunderous sound of footsteps, coming from one of many, many other passages leading to this room.

He was there, Ezra realized with dread. 

 

Slowly emerging from the shadows, silhouette awkwardly, unnaturally bend to the side, the Inquisitor stepped from the darkness.

His steps seemed to echo through the ancient chamber, accompanied by the sickly sound of something wet dropping on the stone floor.

 

Ezra stepped away, cold dread travelling down his spine burning like lightning. The air seemed to be oozing with the Dark Side, to the point it was suffocating.

The shadows flickered, turning the calm faces of ancient statues into angry, vengeful grimaces, staring mercilessly down at him, not even judging anymore.

 

The Inquisitor made another step forward, moving more like a string-puppet with damaged joints than a real person.

His mask was partially broken, smashed visor obscuring his left eye, bloodshot and glassy. 

His breathing was strained, heavy and wet, filling the space with sounds even more disturbing than his footsteps.

There were blood bubbles coming from his mouth as he breathed, heavy and dark red, dripping down his chin, joining the huge strain already covering the jacket and armor underneath.

One of his arms was dangling on the side, disturbingly loose, while the other still had a strong grip on the lightsaber.

 

Ezra made another step back, cold sweat dripping down his face, getting into his eyes and leaving bitter taste in his mouth.

 

How.

How this person was still able to move? Why was he still moving? Why was he still going forward?

 

"...no escape..." the Inquisitor rasped, blood seeping down from his mouth and hitting the ground with a nauseating splashing noise. 

 

"Stop!" Ezra shouted, making another step. His backs meet a cold, cold wall and he shuddered, because it caught him by a total surprise. And because he realized there was no running away from this.

 

"Don't get any closer!"

 

"This is fate," the Inquisitor rasped, with blood bubbling from his mouth. "Accept it." 

 

"No!"

 

With animalistic fear rising in his chest, Ezra desperately looked around, trying to find something, anything.

It was a dead end, so he really couldn't get away from the confrontation, not this time. And even if he did, this man, he will chase him and chase, and chase... 

Ezra needed a weapon.

 

Something to protect himself with, while he dash into one of the many corridors and run, run, run-

 

And then what?, a grim question suddenly appeared, pushing everything else back.

He would run and run and this man will simply follow him, chasing just like it happened before, using him as a prey.

Ezra licked his lips, the sour taste of fear even more intense now, along with the metallic taste; the cut on his lip reopened at some point. 

The blood seeping onto his chin was followed with a cold feeling filling his body, starting from the lungs as he breathed in, quickly filling his whole body with ice.

Never again, he's not going to let that happen ever again even if running away wasn't an option anymore. 

There was nothing in here, but pebbles and dust.

The only weapon around was the lightsaber, still in the Inquisitor's hand.

 

Ezra swallowed, forcing his mind to stop scratching at edges of his skull in terror and actually work. 

The Inquisitor was already wounded, deeply so, considering all that blood. He had trouble breathing and his whole agility was gone, considering just how he was moving, dragging his legs on the floor instead of making an actual step.

He was still blocking the way and Ezra didn't think that trying to dash or jump around the Inquisitor would be the best idea. The lightsabers they were using had a ridiculous reach and could serve as a mid-distance weapons too.

That huge wound on the Inquisitors shoulder was a definite proof.

 

Still.

 

Ezra licked his lips.

He was never alone nor weaponless, because the Force was with him, at the tips of his fingers, just waiting...

Ezra raised his hands and pushed, putting everything he could grasp at behind it. A cloud of dust rose up, marking the path of the powerful blow. Pebbles and stones cracked and rattled furiously, flying in all directions all at once, smashing against the walls and the statues.

Among all the rocket, there was a satisfying surprised gasp, as the Inquisitor had no choice but to curl up and cover his face and the wounds.

 

"Go. Away!"

 

Ezra pushed even more. Sweat dripped down his forehead and there was a stinging feeling in one of his eyes, but he didn't care. He needed this guy away, as far as it was possible and then maybe, just maybe-

 

"Not... Enough!" the Inquisitor managed to grunt. And then, he made a step forward.

 

Ezra's eyes widened. Biting onto his lip, he forced himself to not lose his concentration, not now, no matter how much surprised he was, no matter how terrified he was of the abilities of his enemy.

The Inquisitor slowly but surely, raised his hand. The wounded one, lightsaber still waiting in his good one to be used. Wind pushed away droplets of blood, splattering it at the feet of the statue behind him.

A deep, guttural roar escaped him, as he pushed back against the powerful wind and the blood dropped down.

 

"No way!" Ezra gasped, but it was real. The Inquisitor somehow managed to shield himself and now was pushing forward, one step at a time.

 

"No escape," the gravely, rough voice declared, as the Inquisitor moved even closer, but a few steps away from him, sickly yellow eye bored straight into Ezra's soul.

 

Ezra stepped away, concentration almost faltering. 

There was only one weapon in this place, only one path for him that lead to survival.

It was easy, to just let go of the wind that took almost everything out of him anyway and to reach out, while the Inquisitor was off-balance, one short moment more than enough to grasp at the weapon instead and pull. 

The lightsaber flew right into his hand like it always belonged there, both familiar and new at the same time.

His enemy followed, a split second too late, reaching out for it, beating the distance between them in few fast steps, stopping an arm length away, fuming with anger. The Force was bubbling around him viciously, almost ready to leash out.

All it took was a push of a button.

 

The Inquisitor suddenly stopped dead in his path, his visible eye widened in shock.

Then, slowly, the knees bend under him and he slipped forward, the red blade cutting the flesh upwards as he moved.

He didn't slip on the ground; instead his whole weight was supported by the end of the lightsabers handle, shaky and heavy in Ezra's hands.

 

Ezra couldn't move, the weapon, still filling the room with red light, was stuck in his hand. He tried to drop it, but his hands were not listening.Even his eyes didn't respond to the commands, staring straight into the face of the Inquisitor.

He was so close, Ezra could smell the blood and burnt fabric and flesh. It was bitter and heavy, stopping his breath somewhere in his chest.

From this distance, where they were literally face to face with about a hand or so space between them, Ezra could see the Inquisitor, not only his silhouette in the distance, but the whole him, for the first time.

He was... surprisingly young. 

His eyes were dark brown to the point they seemed to be black and his eyelashes were long and thick, making his face expression that much more intense. 

It was shock first, but the expression morphed into something else. The corners of his eyes narrowed, face muscles shifted, pulling up corners of his mouth, baring teeth-

He was smiling and Ezra couldn't believe it. The man, battered, heavily wounded and who was literally ran through with his very own weapon was smiling.

His mouth moved, forming words, the same words he spoke out loud so many times.

 

"No choice," Ezra understood it despite the gush of blood that came out instead of a voice, despite that terrifying strangled noise that followed.

 

"No," Ezra gasped, shaking his head and refusing to accept what had happened. "No!"

 

His vision was becoming blurry, but that didn't matter; the image of the boy in armor was already burned under his eyelids.

 

"Please, no!" Ezra whined, his face hot and wet. "No..."

 

His grip on the lightsaber finally loosened enough to slip from his fingers. The red light died along with the buzzing noise.

The weapon dropped on the ground, the soft clang powerful in the sudden silence, announcing an end to something. 

Not held by anything anymore, the Inquisitor dropped forward, his forehead smacking into Ezra's shoulder. It stayed there for the longest moment, hot, with sharp edges of the broken mask sticking out and biting into the flesh and then, slowly, his body awkwardly slipped to the side.

It hit the ground with a thud. 

Ezra didn't move. The reality round him didn't make any sense, whirling and shifting. The stone faces of the old masters looked down at him, not offering words of advice or a way to get out of this madness.

 

xxx

 

Deep underground, surrounded by silence, Ezra had no way of telling how much time had passed.

All he knew, that at some point Shadow showed up. 

He wasn't trying to hide his presence, announced long before he actually became visible by heavy, metallic steps echoing through the halls.

Ezra didn't manage find the energy to acknowledge his presence, or to even raise his head.

He supposed he should feel pain, all over his body: the abused fingers, scratches and bruises, He should feel exhausted and shaky but all he felt was overwhelming numbness, like something crawled inside his head and swallowed all that was there, leaving only void behind.

 

Shadow... didn't talk. He took the room in, his gaze swept over the dirt and blood splatters, before he looked up, straight at the stone faces. one of his eyebrows quirked up.

Ezra was grateful for the silence. He sort of expected Shadow to praise him for winning the fight, but getting praised for murdering a person, even just thinking about it, was making his insides twist in painful knots. 

Instead, he simply sat down on the ground next to him, both being close and letting his own thoughts to swallow him.

 

Time shifted around, passing them by as if they were pebbles on the bottom of a river, indifferent and uninterested in pushing them forward.

Ezra found it to be oddly conforming, to be left alone, away from the things that were going on, relieved from the weight of responsibility. 

Never before, he noticed how heavy it was, sitting on top of his shoulder, pushing him mercilessly forward. He had power, after all, the means to help people, the power to fight.

 

The power that seemed to meant nothing at all, because he was just a boy and his enemy swarmed the Galaxy, having taken over many, many solar systems effortlessly, a joined mass of humans all of them swallowed up by evil. Evil that still reached out for more, its hunger never soothed.

How a single person was even able to fight with a moloch like that?, he wondered as his hand reached forward, fingers tingling with pain as they wrapped themselves around the cold, hard surface of the weapon.

 

"It feels... different," Ezra said, more to himself than to Shadow, furrowing his brow and looking down at the lightsaber. 

 

He remembered how it felt, when he first found - was gifted with - the kyber crystal. The sense of wonder and calmness after the storm, the exhaustion that seemed to leave his body for that one short moment of victory. 

 

This didn't feel like victory at all. It was cold and bitter, with anger seemingly seeping out of the deactivated blade and mixing with his own.

 

"I think the Jedi have a way of cleansing the crystals," Shadow said, eyeing him, but otherwise not changing his position.

 

"Cleansing?" Ezra questioned. 

 

"For the Sith, passion is a source of power," Shadow explained. "They are using the emotions to enhance their performance."

 

"They are doing the same with the kyber crystals?"

 

"The lightsaber is supposed to be the extension of your will," Shadow explained. "You're not following the Force either, you're making it follow you."

 

Ezra furrowed his brow and looked at the weapon in his hands, before glanced at the corpse on the stone ground. 

There was something ironic about this, in the most grim, gruesome way possible, a person robbed out of their free will using the Force in such way.

 

"It looks like that, because he filled it with his emotions,” Ezra slowly said, more stating than asking.

Nonetheless, Shadow nodded in confirmation.

 

Ezra swallowed. It almost felt like he was holding not a weapon, but a piece of someone’s soul. 

Not someone’s, he corrected himself instantly. This was a boy he killed. Ezra was not going to run away from the truth, not now. 

 

It could be just his imagination, or maybe his mind was playing tricks on him after learning about the nature of the red kyber crystals, but Ezra could swear that he was able to feel it. 

The anger, horror and sadness, fury and despair, and so much more, all of it buzzing, burning like a surface of a sun but helpless, imprisoned in the cold metal and bound by cords.

It was all that was left on the boy who lied on the ground not too far away, very cold and very dead.

Erasing it…

 

“I’m going to keep it as it is,” Ezra decided, his voice loud and clear.

 

“Oh?” Shadow looked at him, tilting his head to the side. 

 

“I don’t know who he was. I don’t know if he was kidnapped and forced into becoming… this, or maybe he joined the Empire Army out of his own will, not knowing that it would betray him like that,” Ezra explained. “But I’m not going to toss aside what’s left of him simply because it’s not Jedi enough.”

 

That would be too cruel. 

 

“I’m going to fight,” he continued. “Because kids like him deserve to be avenged. “ 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an OPINION when it comes to the stuff with kyber crystals from the Ahsoka novel. It starts with "HOW DARE" and the rest is to vulgar for me to write it down.   
> Anyhow, I find erasing all the suffering, anger and hatred that made the crystal red utterly, absolutely distasteful, no matter how much better the white crystals are going to serve the Light Sider.


End file.
